


Three times blessed her

by Petra



Series: Modern Love [1]
Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Romance, Threesome - F/M/M, historical fiction - Freeform, kink bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-27
Updated: 2010-07-27
Packaged: 2017-10-10 20:09:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/103788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/pseuds/Petra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There's slow and then there's you," Gene said, shaking his head. "Though I don't blame you for turning up your nose at his piddling excuse for a bed, Annie. I've half a notion to lend you one with a proper mattress so I don't lose two good officers to a furniture-related incident."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three times blessed her

**Author's Note:**

> Set after Life on Mars 2x08 and assumes reader's familiarity with that resolution.
> 
> Possession/marking for Kink Bingo. Thanks to [](http://thatyourefuse.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**thatyourefuse**](http://thatyourefuse.dreamwidth.org/) and [](http://d-generate-girl.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**d_generate_girl**](http://d-generate-girl.dreamwidth.org/) for prereading, [](http://sage.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**sage**](http://sage.dreamwidth.org/) for beta reading, and [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/thesmallhobbit/profile)[](http://www.livejournal.com/users/thesmallhobbit/)**thesmallhobbit** for Britpicking. My youthful perusal of the 1969 _Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid To Ask)_ has never been so relevant to my writing process.

  
When Sam said it the first time, Annie stared at him and laughed, trying to work out what had made him decide to make this particular claim. He wasn't drunk, and neither was she. There wasn't anything in his flat that could make him say anything ridiculous unless he wanted to. He'd been so rational, lately, or so she'd thought. Annie said, "You are joking."

Sam pushed his plate away and set his fork down. "No, I'm perfectly serious." He had the expression he used for life-or-death situations, and while sometimes he had different standards of important, he wasn't the sort of man who went around making up lies just to see what she'd say. Whenever Sam said something impossible, he tended to believe it wholeheartedly. Apparently, that went for "I'm in a coma," "That woman is my mother," and "I'm sleeping with the Guv."

"When you say 'sleeping with'--"

Sam pressed his lips together for a long moment. "Do you want the details?"

That was when she slapped him.

Annie wasn't in the habit of slapping men, especially not ones she was fond of, but if he'd gone on any longer she was going to scream, and there were all sorts of things she didn't want to hear him say. He'd kissed her, and he'd made her think he wanted to do it again.

"I'm sorry," she said, her voice shaking, and stood up, shoving his creaky chair away from the table while he cradled his cheek with his hand. "I'll see you tomorrow. Sir."

"Let me walk you home," Sam offered, the marks of her fingers livid on his skin. Anyone could see he'd been fighting.

"No. Not today." Annie left as quickly as she could go without feeling like she was running. Running would catch someone's eye, and the last thing she wanted to do was explain to anyone why she was crying.

It wasn't that Sam was cheating on her, quite, because they weren't so much together as interested in maybe being together, someday. It wasn't that he didn't like her, or what was he doing kissing her in the street in front of God and everybody?

He'd started off the conversation over dinner with, "I would love it if we could see more of each other," which sounded like a polite way of saying, "You've seen me swinging in the breeze, and sometime I'd like for you to return the favor." That was a hell of a thing to say to anyone right before you told them that you didn't like girls, as far as Annie was concerned, much less that you were interested in one specific man who gave every indication of finding things like that perverted beyond the telling of it. So either Sam was making things up or losing his mind, or she didn't know either of them half as well as she'd thought she did.

The only blessing was that she'd given up on expecting sense out of Sam the hour she met him. All she needed him to do was to stay consistent.

When she reached her flat, she pulled out all of her old textbooks that had anything to say about sexuality beyond "A fondness for members of one's own sex is a sign of deep emotional distress." If anything, Sam had seemed less distressed than ever since the incident with DCI Morgan. That implied that either he wasn't doing anything at all with the Guv, if he ever had--in which case he'd have no reason to bring it up--or that he didn't have the standard causes or symptoms. Nonstandard symptoms were Sam all over.

She read the chapters just in case there was something she'd missed. Some of them didn't fit, especially the ones that said homosexuality was a sign of immature desire. The thought of it made her laugh; you couldn't get farther from a pretty little boy than the Guv, and even though Sam wasn't huge, he was hardly boyish.

The only mentions of bisexuality and desire for multiple partners suggested that the person in question was oversexed, possibly to the point of nymphomania. That made Annie smile at first because if there was anyone in the station who she would've said could use more sex, it was Sam, but then again, it was possible he was having all sorts of erotic adventures and he hadn't thought to invite her along before.

She made several notes for herself before she went to bed and hid them between the mattress and the box spring.

When she read them over in the morning, she blushed, but not so much that she didn't go to Sam's flat before breakfast time. She couldn't bear the thought of sitting in the station not talking to him about the whole thing all day.

"Who is it?" he called, sounding wary.

Annie froze, wondering how many people there were in there. "It's Annie."

"Just a moment."

When he opened the door, his shirt was on a little sideways, and his hair was as messy as it could get at that length. His face looked fine, too, so that was a relief. "Good morning," Annie said.

"Good morning to you, too." Sam studied her face for a moment. "Not going to smack me again, are you?"

She shook her head. "Not unless you need it."

Sam laughed and held up his hands. "I'll do my best not to. Come in."

His bed was sloppily made, but there was only the one pillow and no one else's things anywhere. Annie decided that he was almost certainly not hiding anyone in the loo, though she didn't intend to check. "I wanted to say sorry for last night."

"It was at least partially my fault for surprising you like that," Sam said.

Annie thought about her notes and sighed. The experts still didn't make sense when she tried to think of Sam in those contexts. Disturbed he might be, but not in the ways they said. "Better now than if we'd tried going out and you hadn't told me beforehand."

Sam scrubbed at his eyes briefly. "I suppose. Cuppa?"

Tea sounded excellent, not least because it would keep him busy while she made sure her thoughts were in order. "Please."

While he put the kettle on, she sat down in one of his flimsy chairs and thought it over yet again. Sam said, "I didn't mean to upset you."

Annie bit her lip. "You've said a lot of things to me that sounded crazy, Sam, but I thought you'd stopped that. If you need to talk about things, then that's fine, but I thought--" she blinked and looked away from him when the burn of tears threatened. "I thought you cared about me. More than that."

"Oh, damn it, I do." Sam sat across from her at his tiny table. "Look, I told you because I care about you, and because I--" he swallowed hard "--I'd stop all that if it was important to you."

"But it's important to you, isn't it?" Annie looked at the table and studied the pattern of dots. "I don't know what it would be like, trying to be in love with someone who was, who was seeing someone else, too."

"That depends on how you manage it," Sam said, and she stared at him. "I haven't done it in a long-term serious relationship, but the bottom line is, as long as everybody knows what they want to know about what's going on, it's not cheating."

"You're not making any sense."

"It's more like changing the rules than breaking them," Sam said. The kettle whistled, and Annie stood up to tend to it, not because Sam didn't make perfectly good tea, but because she couldn't sit and listen to him right then without something else to think about.

"Changing the rules," she said, and brought the cups over.

Sam smiled at her, that sweet smile that reminded her why she'd come over at half seven. "Yes. If you're doing something your partner--or partners--didn't want you to, that's cheating. Otherwise, it's more like when you're playing Monopoly with someone who does that Free Parking rule."

"Right." She laughed and covered her mouth. "Free parking, is it?"

"Reserved parking, maybe," he said, and she laughed again.

"How did you explain all this to the Guv, then?"

Sam coughed. "Haven't yet. Haven't even started."

Annie frowned and poured out while she was thinking. "What about his missus? Isn't that cheating?"

"It would be if she hadn't moved to Glasgow two years ago," Sam said. "And I did ask before we started--"

"Don't," Annie said, holding up her free hand. "Please. I don't want to know what you do." Reading her textbooks had given her more than enough examples, and while some of them sounded uncomfortable, others didn't seem so bad. Whatever it was, she didn't want to contemplate it at that hour of the morning.

Sam groaned softly and took the tea as if it was holy water. "I was only going to say 'started doing anything,' that's all."

"Still." Annie sniffed, then blew on her tea until it was cool enough to sip. "It's all very well to say you'll stop the whole thing if I don't like it, but if you really care about him, that wouldn't be fair, would it?"

"I do," Sam said, more fervently than she was expecting. "But I care about you, too, and--" his mouth twisted and he looked bit ill. "I hate being in the closet, and I can't imagine ever convincing Gene to come out, even if we somehow make it to the nineties."

Annie said, "What do you mean?"

"I mean things like walking down the street hand in hand."

The mental image made her blush, though there was nothing sexual about it. They'd have all Manchester staring at them if they tried, and that would be before everyone realized they could throw things. "Oh. No, I don't think you'd better hold your breath for that one."

Sam sighed. "No, I'm not that mad, I promise. So--let me put it to you this way: if you'll have me warts and all, let's see if we can make a go of it. And if you'll have me warts and--and the occasional night away from home--and all, then so much the better."

Annie held onto her teacup tightly and thought about it. "Are you a nymphomaniac?"

Sam choked on his tea. Once he'd cleared his lungs, he said, "No. Of course not. Don't you think you'd have noticed?"

He didn't show many of the signs, but there were a few things about Sam that had never added up properly. "Apart from that time you were handcuffed to your bed?"

He went pale at that. "I didn't choose that one, you know."

Annie frowned. "I'm sorry. No, I know. So you're not a sex addict, then?"

"Maybe a recovering one," he said, but that was one of those jokes that only Sam thought was funny. "No, not at all."

She thought about her notes. "Because bisexuality usually happens when people are nymphomaniacs, you see, and if you're not, then I don't know why you'd want two, two lovers." Applying that term to the Guv made her think of the undercover operation they'd done with the swingers and smile. There weren't a lot of other ways he struck her as a loving man.

Sam sighed and leaned back in his chair until it creaked, then sat up again. "Promise you won't smack me again?"

Annie closed her eyes briefly. "I'm sorry. I promise, I won't."

"I care about both of you," Sam said, in that voice he used when he believed something all the way down to his toes, no matter how mad it was. "I don't need--well--I don't honestly require anything from either of you, but I'd miss you more than I can say if you weren't in my life. Either of you."

His words gave her a chill. "Are you thinking of leaving again?" Annie asked.

For some reason, after all Sam's insistence that he didn't belong, that made him laugh. "Not at all."

"Then you're not getting away from the Guv, are you?" Annie sighed. "And I don't want to let you go. Even if you are--" she shook her head, looking for words that weren't rude. "Doing whatever it is you're doing with him."

"I can stop whenever I want to."

Annie bit her lip. "I don't think it's fair if you don't tell him what's going on with us, though--whatever that is." She looked at the clock. "But you shouldn't ring him up now, because he's either at the station already or home ill."

Sam glanced over and winced. "Yes, we'd better go."

It was thirty-two hours before they left the station again, and the Guv offered them both a ride home that was far easier to accept when they were falling down tired. When they stopped the first time, Annie stumbled out and Sam said, "Best go home, Annie," before he closed the door behind himself.

She got back in, shivery from too much tea and too little rest, and said, "Sorry."

"Take over for Gladys," Gene said. "He's been talking a mile a minute, keeping me from falling asleep."

It wasn't far to Annie's flat, and she could normally have thought of thousands of things to say, but she drew a blank.

Gene yawned hugely and she couldn't guess whether it was on purpose. "Come on, petal," he prompted her.

There was only one thought left in her head--it had been plaguing her during the quiet parts of the day's case, while she was meant to be working on collating--and she blurted it out. "Sam says you've been sleeping together. And that's all right with me."

The car swerved, then went back to a relatively safe path. "Did he. Is it." Those weren't questions.

"Sorry," Annie said. "Yes. And--and I suppose so, yes."

"Huh."

The next street was Annie's. "I don't like it, exactly, but I'm hardly going to try to order you around, now, am I?"

They screeched to a halt. "Look--" Gene frowned at her, then shook his head. "I can't put words to this nonsense when I've had my rest, my tea, and a pint, so God knows why I'm trying it now. Some other time."

Annie nodded. "Some other time," she said. That would give her time to think of what to say. Sleep could only help.

Some other time became Friday week before it came round, and then only because Sam gave the Guv a nasty look and said he had a case to follow up on at eight-o'clock, when the lads were all half-drunk and Annie was too calm to worry about what Sam might be getting himself into.

"You can take that case and--"

"Guv," Sam said, and that time it worked, though not without some grumbling.

Sam gave Annie a look that was much softer. "If you could give us a hand, WDC Cartwright, it might go better."

It took her one turn in the wrong direction to realize they weren't going back to the station. "What case is this?" she asked Sam, keeping her tone sharp so they'd know she wasn't fooled.

Gene snorted. "The case of the twisted knickers."

"I see. And you're sure you want me along?"

"Seems to me you've as big a stake here as anyone," Gene said, and glanced at her in the mirror.

She couldn't bring herself to smile at him, quite, though she met his eyes. Whatever Sam had been saying to him about the idea of a relationship between himself and Annie, he didn't seem terribly fussed. "I suppose so."

When they stopped, it was at a house Annie didn't recognize, and she hesitated again. There were things they needed to talk about, but having the conversation in Gene's house sounded like asking for trouble in a lot of ways. "I could wait in the car," she offered.

"The hell you can." Gene opened the car door for her. "A brave girl like you, you're going to hide out here, and what would the neighbors say to that?"

Annie took a deep breath and got out. He hadn't backed off, and she was closer to him than she might've liked to be, though he'd done nothing to make her feel unsafe. "Don't know. What do they say about your coming and going at all hours with Sam?"

Gene gave her half a smile. "What you'd think: 'Oh, there's that copper off again. No wonder his Nancy buggered off.'"

Sam said, "It'd be better to have this conversation inside, don't you think?"

"'course." Gene gestured toward the back of the house. "After you, Miss Cartwright."

Annie frowned at Sam, who shook his head. She ignored him; it was his warnings and his odd ways that had put them into this mess in the first place, so what did he know? "You're not going to call me that, after all this, are you, Guv?"

Gene sighed heavily and brushed past her to open the door. "If you're looking to be Missus Tyler, don't take that up with me."

Sam groaned in irritation. "That's not part of this conversation."

"Annie would do," she said.

"Then don't bloody well call me 'Guv' when we're talking about this case. Annie." He waved her into the house.

The downstairs had a front room off to the left, half dust and half empty spaces, that looked as though no one had gone into it for years, save to remove everything but a table and a settee. It had enough dust that if anyone had walked in, they'd be leaving footprints. Sam touched her shoulder and said, "This way." She followed him down a hall past a door that let onto a small and surprisingly neat kitchen, to a living room with a brown settee coming apart at the seams and a wide armchair, both set up to face a television. The place smelled of dust and cigarettes.

Annie waited for Gene to come in before she tried to figure out where she was supposed to be sitting. He settled into the chair like it was his throne, lit a cigarette, and gave her the kind of look he used on suspects he wanted to shake information out of. "Didn't have enough to drink, did you, Annie?" he asked.

"More than enough, I think." Her toes were still warmer than they should be, and she felt too detached from the problems they were apparently going to work through. She couldn't count the things she had to lose if something went wrong, starting with their respect.

"That makes one of us." Gene took out his flask. "Sit down, lass."

She took the far end of the settee, and Sam sat in the middle of it, close enough that he could easily reach out and touch her, but not so close he was going to brush her by mistake. "So," Sam said.

"I thought we'd worked all of this out," Annie said, looking at him. "You can do what you like, at least between the two of you."

"Maybe that'd be enough if he'd listen to a word I said." Sam folded his arms and leaned back against the settee, frowning at Gene.

"Maybe if you ever talked sense, Dorothy." Gene took a swig and put the flask on the arm of the chair. "Don't see why a pretty girl would put up with your sowing your wild oats. Man up, settle down, and get on with things."

Annie sighed. Part of her agreed with Gene, but she doubted that Sam would really be happy in any lasting way if she insisted on such a thing. "If that's how you're thinking about it, no wonder, but--" she looked away from them for a moment. "I believe Sam when he says he's not some kind of sex addict. Maybe you have more evidence than I do, sir."

The only word for the sound Gene made was guffaw, which he did at length. "Likes it well enough when he can get it, but--addict--no. Randy sod, but--" he shook his head. "We had a constable who was a right sex fiend, before your time, petal. Spent half his days tossing off in the loo when he couldn't find a bird connected to his case to look after his stiffie."

Sam smiled tightly. "I don't do that at all."

"And why should you? There's shelves in the Lost and Found that'll never be the same again, but you had some help in breaking them." Gene shrugged, sobering. "Still, that's no reason anyone--least of all a good girl like you, Annie--should put up with you wandering off on her."

Annie swallowed so she wouldn't lose her voice. "It's not wandering, is it, if I know where he's going."

"My mum always knew where my dad'd been when he went and wandered, too," Gene said, giving her a look that was mostly sympathy. "Didn't mean she was glad he'd gone."

Sam winced. "It wouldn't be like that."

"You're damn right it wouldn't. Missus Wright always changed with her curtains open, and did half her housework in one of them French nighties when she knew our dad was home." Gene picked up the flask again. "I'm not poncing around in lace for nobody."

The mental image made Annie laugh and try to work out how all the psychology descriptions of homosexuality and effeminacy could possibly apply to Gene. "Don't think it'd suit you, sir."

"Jesus." Gene leaned back in his chair heavily for a moment, then sat up again and pointed at Sam. "This is why it's not going to work, Sammy-boy. The second any of the highly bloody trained detectives we spend all our damn time with gets half a whisper of anything, Cartwright's ruined, you're even less likely to win Most Popular Copper than you already are, and I'm--" he shook his head.

His hand shook, too.

"So it'll be an undercover assignment, then," Annie said, and leaned back deliberately on the couch, for all her heart was beating faster when she thought of making it all real. "Sneaking around for--for whatever, and it's not like you're mad enough to take terrible risks."

Sam sighed. "Living a double life. Things you never say in one context that are fine in another. Live the--live the role."

"The trouble is our Tyler's terrible at that rot," Gene said, looking at Annie with the sort of expression he gave her when she said something intelligent about a case. "Gets all caught up in himself and forgets he's supposed to be someone else."

Annie didn't turn to look at Sam. "He's been doing all right with you so far. I mean, I didn't know anything was going on, and Sam and I are better friends than he is with Chris, or Ray, or Geoff."

"Because I knew if anything went wrong, Gene'd kill me with his own hands," Sam said. "But it hasn't been all that long, and it's not that complicated."

"No reason to think it'll be any worse now." Annie shrugged and glanced at Sam, who was frowning at his own knees. "It means one more safe person, doesn't it?"

He sighed and only relaxed a little. "Well, yes."

"Still don't know why you're not kicking up a fuss about all this," Gene said.

She didn't say she'd seen them working together, talking together, being together in nonsexual ways enough that she knew she couldn't ask Sam to break off one part of their relationship without jeopardizing the rest. "Why do you say that?" Annie asked, thinking of her classes and wondering how far she'd get with basic therapeutic techniques before he realized what she was up to.

Gene shook his head. "What kind of bird puts up with all this crap when she could have any nice bloke with his head solidly on his shoulders--and don't you make that face at me, Gladys--and no twinkle-toes mincing around behind her back?"

Annie thought about the nice blokes she'd had and compared them to Sam, not for the first time that week. "One who'd rather have someone worth the time. And--and no behind my back nonsense, from either of you."

Sam coughed, and then coughed again, until she realized he was covering up a laugh, and why. "You sure about that?"

Annie put her hands in her lap and stared at them, putting aside the images she didn't want of what they might do. "I didn't mean all the time. Just, if you need to talk about something, or you're upset about something, I need to know as much as you do."

Gene sighed. "You're as bad as he is, Cartwright."

"I hope so."

Sam touched her shoulder lightly. "So what you really mean is that we should communicate about our feelings."

Annie smiled. That was the sort of thing that made her believe things could work with Sam: he said things like that without making them sound like she was being a terrible girl about it all. "Yes. Even you, Gene. I know you have some, somewhere in there, or we wouldn't be talking about any of this."

He scowled at her as if she'd questioned a professional decision. "Put that on your list of things to keep well under wraps, right after Tyler's frilly knickers."

"Yes, sir," Annie said, and glanced at Sam, who looked less like he was about to run for help. "Are they frilly?" she asked him. It didn't seem likely, but transvestism was common among homosexuals.

"Don't you know?" Gene asked, sounding genuinely offended. "Jesus, what kind of a poof are you, Sammy?"

"You know the answer to that, Guv."

Annie smiled at Sam and reached for his hand. He laced their fingers together and squeezed back. "We've been taking it slow."

"There's slow and then there's you," Gene said, shaking his head. "Though I don't blame you for turning up your nose at his piddling excuse for a bed, love. I've half a notion to lend you one with a proper mattress so I don't lose two good officers to a furniture-related incident."

Sam sighed, and she tried to work out whether he was hurt or relieved without looking at him.

There hadn't been enough alcohol in the whole pub to keep Annie from blushing at that suggestion and half-crushing Sam's fingers while she was at it. "No, thank you," she said, and couldn't look at either of them while she said it. "Not tonight."

"There are reasons we've been taking it slow," Sam said, and rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand. "It's fine, Annie."

"So you wouldn't break the springs, right," Gene said, and then his chair creaked as he stood up. "And because you wanted to talk about all of it first, to make sure. God preserve me, how'd I end up with a pair of lesbos on my settee?"

"There's no call to be nasty about it," Annie said, and let Sam go to get up, too. "If all you want is someone to have sex with, then that's your business, but I'm looking for more than that."

Gene gave her a look that made her wonder if he'd have hit her if she was a man, then shook his head. "All right, sweetheart. Carry him off and marry him and coddle him, and may you have ten fat babies."

"That's not what I want." Sam pushed himself between them and prodded Gene in the chest. Any second now they were going to come to blows. "That, too, but not just that, and you damn well know it, or you would if you ever listened to me."

"Don't fight," Annie protested, wondering what she'd do if they started in earnest. It was bad enough when they were meant to be working and they fought, but this was worse, and she'd at least half started it. "If you honestly cared about each other, you'd try not to hurt each other."

"For God's sake," Gene said, and grabbed Sam by the lapels.

Annie backed away, expecting them to end up on the floor in a second, wrestling or having a punch-up, and over what? "God--"

Instead of a punch, Gene kissed him, starting out as violent as any blows they'd given each other where she could see and easing off into something that looked less like it was meant to leave bruises. Sam wrapped his arm around Gene's shoulder a few seconds in and held on, giving as good as he got.

Annie covered her mouth and stared, trying to make sense of them. Maybe it was that detachment that kept her from feeling horribly jealous, or it was just that the jealousy had worn off because she'd known this was coming, sooner or later, since Sam told her the truth. She was sure that she ought to be upset that someone was kissing her Sam, but he was less hers than she wanted him to be.

That, and it made her dizzy looking at them, teasing back and forth now, moving from violence to something nearly sweet. She wanted to pull Sam away, but she couldn't work out whether she wanted to do it to kiss him, to kiss Gene, or to kiss them both.

After thirty seconds, when their hands had meandered downwards and she was in danger of finding out what sort of pants Sam wore right then and there, she said, "You've made your point."

They broke apart, red-mouthed and out of breath. "Right," Gene said. "What point was that, again?"

Sam shook his head. "Something about not being abusive, I think."

Annie sighed and folded her arms, fighting the urge to reach out to them. "And not treating people you care about like they're crap."

"Ah, that was it." Gene spread his hands. "Look, petal, if I was any good at this romance lark, I'd still have the missus around, wouldn't I?"

"Not necessarily." Annie studied his face, teaching herself how to look at him and not see him with his arms round Sam every second. "Could be she needed something else."

Gene nodded. "Could be."

Sam came over and put his hand on Annie's shoulder. "You're sure you're all right with this?" he asked, calm as he ever got, as if his mouth wasn't wet from kissing Gene.

Annie stared at his mouth for a long moment. "You don't fight that often, do you?"

"Only about important things. And not as rough-and-tumble as we used to." Sam licked his lips, which were rather puffy.

Annie sighed and kissed him, putting her arms around him and feeling the ways they fit together. It wasn't anything like he'd looked with Gene, she was sure of that; he kept his hands proper and his tongue, too, until she teased him into a better kiss.

"There's still that bed waiting if you want it," Gene said, the rumble of a chuckle under his words.

Sam gave her one last closed-mouth kiss and a smile that had her shivering, but it was too much. "No, thank you," she said again. It was strange enough to think that he was watching them kiss without knowing he was thinking of them doing more than that, standing close enough to touch if he wanted to.

"Bloody shame," Gene said.

Annie let Sam go again and turned on Gene. "I'm not going to change my mind no matter how many times you ask."

"That's fine, Annie," Sam said.

Gene gave her a leer that was worse than any look he'd given her since she joined his unit, or before it, either, and she scowled at him, trying to ignore the vivid memory of him kissing Sam, of the various times she'd thought he was a handsome man in his own right. "It's not fine. Don't push me."

"Not pushing, Cartwright. Just asking." Gene was still too relaxed, still looking at her.

Annie took another step toward him. Too close, and she could smell the booze on his breath from there, practically feel him breathing, but she wasn't going to back off and let him win this round. He'd pushed her too many times in too many ways, and while she knew down to her bones that he was a good man, she couldn't give in or back down. "When I say no, I damn well mean no."

"I heard you," Gene said.

Annie had a moment where she knew who she was, who she was facing up to, and what it would all mean if it came crashing down on her head; in the next moment, she knew she didn't have anything left to lose, and neither did he, not between the three of them. She said, "Then listen," and kissed Gene.

Sam said, "Oh, Annie." He sounded less surprised than he might.

Gene made a startled noise against her mouth and hesitated for longer than she expected before he did anything else, as though she was going to give up at this point. When he realized she wasn't backing off till they did it right, he was still gentler than he'd been with Sam, right up to the point where he got a solid handful of her arse and gave her a squeeze.

She bit his lower lip for that and he patted her, then let go. She wished he hadn't, then told herself to leave it alone for now.

Sam made a strangled noise. "About that bed," he said.

Gene said, "You heard the lady," with his eyes on Annie's, looking as though he wanted to tear off all her clothes right there.

She understood the feeling, but it was too much for one night. "I'd better get home," she said, without adding, "while I can still pretend I want to," and took a step back from him, willing her knees to stop shaking so much.

"Right," Sam said, and took a deep breath. "Right. I'll see you home, then."

Annie tightened one hand into a fist so the little pain of having her nails dig into her palm could help her head clear. If she had Sam in her flat right now, she'd be tearing his trousers off. On the other hand, if she stayed, something else would happen, and she could make a good guess as to who but not what. "Just to the door," she warned him.

Sam patted her shoulder. "Whatever you need, Annie."

Gene cleared his throat. "I'm for bed, myself."

Annie said, "Good night, Guv," and meant it, though she could still taste his mouth.

"Get some rest, Cartwright," he said, and gave her a quick smile.

Annie managed to keep her hands off of Sam for all of two days before she invited him back to her flat after the pub and said, "I'm not waiting for a ring, you know."

"I didn't think you were, exactly," Sam said.

She had been waiting for something to give for so long she'd been nearly sure nothing ever would, but Sam had changed the rules, settled in, and Annie was ready to do more than wait. She kissed him first, and Sam kissed her back, warm and hungry as he'd been before, but without anyone else to distract him.

It was better once she let herself believe he wasn't going to call it all off, once she knew she didn't want to ask him for more time. That took until he had his pants off and her skirt was somewhere across the room along with her knickers, but the clothing wasn't so much the full stop as the underscore. The look in his eyes was what convinced her. "So you're not going to run off," she said, to hear him say it aloud.

"No, not at all." he said, and gave her one of those tiny frowns, his brows crinkling together. "Why would I? Where would I go?"

"I never really knew," she said, and kissed him.

Whatever he'd been doing with Gene--and she wasn't going to think about it right then--he must've learned a few tricks with those Hyde girls beforehand. Most of the blokes Annie'd gone half that far with, when they said, "D'you mind if--" they were asking a girl to lie back and take it.

She said, "If what?" and he squeezed her hip.

"I'd like to taste you."

Annie blinked at him and wondered if it would be worth the bother. Frank had done it, twice, and made faces; Ned had done it all of once, when she asked, and it had been dull. She'd never wanted to ask him again, or any of the other men she'd been with. "You like that?"

"God, yes. Don't you?" He sounded for all the world like he meant it.

"I suppose," she said.

Sam looked stricken, and he rubbed his hand over his mouth. "Give me a try, all right? Maybe I'll be better than whoever botched the job before."

"All right." Annie shrugged and lay back on the bed, the thin white sheets familiar and scratchy against her skin. She'd washed them three times in the last two weeks, wanting them to be fresh for this sort of thing as soon as it happened.

"Tuck your pillow under your hips," Sam said, halfway to using his Detective Inspector voice.

She shook her head, smiling at him and his strange little habits, and did it. It felt like being at the doctor's, all open and stared at, except that Sam didn't look like he was working.

He looked like he was starving.

"It's not my best angle," Annie said eventually.

"Not your worst one, either--sorry." Sam shook his head a little, smiling. "It's been too long," he said, and ran his hand up her thigh, then stroked her lightly. "God, you're lovely."

Annie laughed and shivered at the touch, willing herself not to kick at the tickling. "You're mad."

"Not anymore," he said, and bent down to lick her.

She knew the basic diagrams of female anatomy, and she knew her own body well enough to ease a lonely night, but that was miles off from Sam. He touched her like all that staring had been planning, like he'd been mapping out exactly what he wanted to do to her.

"Oh, God," she said, and Sam hummed a questioning noise, looking up at her. "Keep going. If you want to."

He hummed again--maybe it was a groan he didn't let her go for--and did something like a flick with his tongue, then sat back an inch. "I should've said before, but it's not a problem of do I want to keep going, but when you need me to stop."

Annie stared at his damp grin. "I'll let you know, I promise."

"I don't want to do anything you don't like," he said, as if he needed to say it for her to know it was true.

"You haven't yet."

Sam grinned at her again. "Good. Just let me know."

She could barely talk once he started again, insistent, licking her open and focusing on her until she couldn't breathe, easing her up to a crashing orgasm that made her bang her head on the bare mattress and dig her feet in hard. After it passed and he didn't stop, except to give her a wink, Annie tousled his hair and said, "That was nice. Really," between the rough strokes of his tongue.

Sam let her go. His hair was sticking up with sweat and his mouth was bright red. "Enough?"

Annie cupped his sticky cheek. "You weren't joking."

"Not about that." Sam pressed his face against her thigh and kissed it, ticklish and damp. "Do you want more?"

"You'll have me screaming the place down."

He shivered and gave her an intent look, as if he'd keep her where she was all night if she let him. "That sounds like a challenge."

Annie tugged on his ear gently, thinking of all the terrible jokes she'd heard about people doing what he'd done for her. "Not now."

Sam came readily enough and lay next to her, more comfortably once she'd pulled the pillow out from under her arse and put it back where it belonged. "So," he said, giving her a smile she recognized from when he'd solved a prickly case, smug and happy.

"It was good." Annie felt herself blushing. "Really lovely, and we'll have to do it again sometime."

Sam hugged her tightly as if she'd said tomorrow was Christmas. "Thank you."

His prick was poking her in the stomach, hard as anything. She kissed his cheek and wondered how long it would be before he asked for what he really wanted. "What're you thanking me for? I haven't done anything yet."

"You have no idea how long I've been wanting to do that." Sam stroked her back, tracing her shoulder blade as if it was one more part of her he needed to learn, as important as her face or, apparently, the parts he'd just spent so much time nuzzling.

Annie bit her lip. "If you say so." And so he didn't have to say it, she said, "D'you want to--"

Sam touched her cheek and looked at her for a few seconds before he said anything. "Do you want to?"

"Why not?" Annie kissed him, making a face at what a mess he was. "If you're half as good at it as you are at--" she shook her head a little "--then it'll be worth it."

He laughed and kissed her again; she was sure she'd never kiss him again without thinking of his tongue on her, making her shake with pleasure. "I'll do my best. Are you on the Pill?"

That was exactly the sort of thing she kept telling herself to expect from him: out of the blue, even when it made sense, and missing everything important. "I haven't been doing this with anyone else in an age, so why would I be?"

Sam let out a long, shuddering breath, and she wondered what he thought she was getting up to. Introducing him to one ex-boyfriend and telling one story about one wild night--maybe he'd got the wrong idea somewhere in there. Though with his escapades, he'd no call to judge her. "All right, then. Hang on a tick." He let her go and got out of bed, then rummaged through his clothes until he found his jacket.

Annie watched him, the long lean lines of his body, and the flush on the back of his neck. When he came back with enough condoms to keep a brothel stocked, she covered her mouth and tried to hide her own blush. "Don't know as how we'll need that many."

He stopped by the side of the bed before he got back in and gave her another long look. "If you'll have me back again, we'll work through them sooner or later."

"Put them in the bedside table, then. Most of them." Annie reached toward him. There were so many rules that she took for granted that he didn't seem to know. She wasn't going to let herself wonder how long he thought this would go on, how long it could go on before someone found them out or they made it official. She could think of worse ideas than sneaking about with Sam, pretending to be innocent round the station and carrying on until all hours afterward, but it wouldn't last forever.

Thinking that reminded her that he'd already been doing that with Gene for who knew how long, and that was something that couldn't come right in the end, couldn't stop being a secret.

"If you'd rather not, we can wait," Sam said.

Annie focused on the moment again, on his leg pressing against hers. "Wait for what?" she asked, because she wasn't going to pretend she was innocent, or that she wanted to wait very long, but she wanted to hear Sam's answer.

He shrugged. "Whatever you need."

Annie sighed and hugged him, reminding herself that he was there and that he was probably not going anywhere until he had to. "I'm not a tease, Sam. If I didn't want to, I'd have kissed you good night hours ago. There's nothing to wait for; I'm not a virgin, for God's sake, and I don't need you to propose." She clasped his hand briefly and put it on her breast, thinking of the first, nearly innocent, time he'd touched her like that. "So if you want to, let's do it."

Sam bit his lip for a long moment, rubbing her nipple with his thumb like he was barely thinking about it. "I want to. I do."

"Then what are you waiting for?"

"For both of us to be sure, I think." He smiled tightly. "All right. Why not?"

"That's better." Annie grinned and kissed him again, making it the best tease she could, long and drawn out, until Sam was making soft noises against her mouth.

"How do you want to do this, then?" Sam asked, his voice rough.

Annie shivered all the way to her toes. "I'm sure you know what you're doing."

"I'll try to live up to that, thank you." Even with that, even shivery and warm from everything he'd already given her, she half-expected to end up on her back again, but he lay back once he'd got one of his packets open and the condom on, lean and inviting. "Like this?"

"You sure?" she asked, trying to work out where she'd put her knees and how it would all work.

Sam spread his hands and gave her another grin that she wanted to kiss. "It's easier to touch you this way."

It was somewhat awkward at first, trying to settle in, but once they'd got lined up and going, it felt as good as it ever had with a fellow on top of her, but dirtier somehow. "I feel like I'm putting on a show," Annie said.

"You're not," Sam said, cupping her breast with one hand and stroking the damp curls between her legs with the other. "Or--that's not the point. God, you feel good."

Annie moaned and pressed her lips together to keep the sound in. "So do you. So do you--oh, God."

She wanted it to go on and on, simple and strange all at once, the two of them finding something together they hadn't had before, but it didn't, it couldn't; Sam's mouth fell open and he shook his head. "Sorry, I can't--" he gave her a rueful, glazed smile. "I can't wait much longer."

"It's okay." Annie traced his lips with her fingers and ground down against him, covering his mouth when he groaned too loud. She couldn't imagine explaining it to anyone else in the building if they asked her. "You're wonderful, you are. Don't worry about it. Just--let go."

He shook under her, arching off the bed until the frame creaked ominously. "Jesus, I love you--"

Annie bit her lip, sure he hadn't meant to say it, and held onto his shoulder as he came, eyes shut tight and mouth wide open. When he opened his eyes again, she smiled at him. "Not too bad, was it?"

Sam gave her a dazed smile. "Not bad at all--you knew that. God. Give me a minute and I'll pay you back for it."

She eased off him, holding the condom on, and shivered with the cold air drying all the places they weren't touching anymore. "Whenever you're ready."

He kissed her softly. "I'll wash and be right back."

Listening to Sam in her bath with the pipes clunking made Annie smile. She tried to work out whether she was in love with him, or whether the dizzy feeling she had when she was with him was something else. He had always seemed mad enough to pull everyone else down with him if he wasn't careful, though he hadn't been acting odd recently. If he had, she would've kept him at more of a distance, as she had been.

At least, he hadn't been acting strangely around her. She reminded herself to ask Gene about it, sometime, and the thought made her want to laugh. Between the two of them, they might manage to look after Sam if he let them. Most people didn't need that much minding.

But most people didn't crawl back into bed with her with their hands warm and their chest chilly and say, "Do you want some more?"

Annie hadn't had enough nights like that one, even if it ended at half two and Sam went home for the sake of her reputation. She was already half-asleep by the time he kissed her goodbye, and she barely remembered locking the door behind him when she woke.

The next day, Annie had to be careful to keep herself from smiling more than normal at work; the blokes were bad enough with each other when they thought one of them was having sex, and she didn't want to hear any of those sorts of comments directed toward her. It was enough that she knew she was happy, and that Sam knew. He brought her a cuppa when she came in and their fingers brushed.

He gave her one of those smiles that said he felt as good about it all as she did, and she wanted to kiss him right there.

Annie said, "Thank you, sir," softly enough that no one else would hear it. Sam didn't need anyone mocking him for turning into her charwoman.

"You're welcome," he said, and sat sideways on her desk. In a louder voice, he said, "About the Tompkins case, WDC Cartwright," and they were off, back to the normal scheme of things and a conversation they could have out loud without anyone getting taunted.

The Guv came over to her desk after ten minutes' work on the case--a wife gone missing, a husband who was half off his head with worry, and Annie was sure that there was a connection with a jewelry robbery--and leaned against the side opposite Sam, scowling at them. "Forgot where your desk is, Tyler?"

"No, Guv." Sam's smile was too quick, much brighter than it would normally be of a morning. "I was just talking to Annie, and--" he stood up "--I didn't think to pull up a chair."

The Guv shook his head. "Best you give the lady her space. You know that." He knocked into Sam on his way back to his office, obvious and harsh. Annie wondered whether he was jealous, exactly, or whether he was telling them to mind themselves so that no one else would twig to what they'd been doing.

Sam gave Annie a rueful look. "I'd better tell him what you've put together regarding our latest case," he said, half an apology, and followed the Guv, giving him more space than he normally would.

Annie sighed and waited three minutes, but when they didn't start shouting at each other, she gathered up her notes and followed them. "I've got it all laid out here," she said, holding up her papers as an apology for interrupting.

"Good and laid out, I can see that." The Guv scowled at her, and she frowned back, trying to guess how much of his irritation had anything to do with work. "Right." He patted the desk. "Show me what you've got, Cartwright."

She stared at him. That sounded filthy on the face of it. "Guv, I didn't--"

"The notes," he said.

Annie slapped them down on the desk. "Here. Shall I read them off to you, or do you want me to go?"

"Annie," Sam said, and she shook her head.

"I did the work; I'll talk you through it all. But--" She looked toward the windows, where the blinds were wide open, but no one in the division was paying any attention to them. "Don't make it about something else, that's all."

"Good girl." The Guv sat heavily in his chair. "Tell me about your Tompkins case."

"I meant you, too." She picked up the notes and gave him a nasty look over them. "I thought we'd worked it all out."

He shook his head and glanced down to light a cigarette. "I'll get used to you two swanning about the place looking like you can hear birds singing all the time, but if you're going to come in whistling every day, you'd best get yourself a big ring, petal."

Annie glanced at her ringless fingers, thinking of all the promises she hadn't asked Sam to make her. "I wasn't whistling, sir."

"And nor was Sammy-boy there. See you keep it that way, and stop all the damn smiling, or the nice detectives you work with are going to figure out there's something going on, eventually. They can be a bit thick, but they're not that bad."

Sam sat on the corner of his desk, close enough that they could reach out and touch each other except for everything that made that impossible. "And then they'll sulk as badly as you are? Thanks, I'll skip that."

"Amazing though it may be to you, Tyler, not everyone in this station is pining after your poncey arse." The Guv smacked him on the knee. "Get off my desk."

Sam smiled as if that had reassured him instead of making him angry as an insult and a slap might and stood up. "Sorry, Guv. Go on, Annie."

Annie sighed at both of them and started to read out her notes.

The only thing that sustained her through the rest of the day and several hours in the collator's den was lunch, which was when Sam got her alone again and said, "You did good work there. On the case, and with all of it."

There was dust all over her clothes and her eyes ached almost as much as her thighs. "Thanks, sir."

He grimaced at the title, though she'd hardly stop calling him that at work until things were far more official. "And--God, I'm not going to start apologizing for Gene, or I'll be doing it until the end of days."

"You don't need to." Annie shrugged. "I know he thinks I'm good at my job, or he wouldn't let me do it."

"That's not what I meant," Sam said, lowering his voice. "I meant--hell, you know, don't you?"

The argument that hadn't quite happened earlier had been effective at killing off all of her urge to whistle, not that it had been very strong in the first place. "Not your fault. And he's not your responsibility, no matter what you think of him."

Sam smiled. "Thank God for that."

Chris came up to their table in a rush. "You done eating, Boss?"

Sam gave Annie an apologetic look and said, "I am now. What is it, Chris?"

"There's a call in. That Stephenson abduction--they've found the boy."

Annie got to her feet as quickly as Sam did, though it wasn't her case. "I'll be right there," Sam said, and gave her a bit of a wave as he went, dodging round tables. She watched him go, then tidied up and thought about how inconvenient it would be trying to go somewhere nice with him, if anyone from the station knew where they were.

On the other hand, if she wanted to find a man who didn't jump to rescue anyone he could, she would've done it already or looked somewhere outside the department. It was far better to watch Sam dash out and know that if it had been her case, he would've watched her go and been as proud of her as she was of him.

The next few months flew by between the constant demands of work and the occasional night out or in with Sam, talking and making love until all hours. He smiled more as time went on, and while he was still a bit odd, he hadn't done anything mad for a long time. Annie thought about asking him what had changed, but she was afraid that the answer would be weird, or that the question would make him lose his equilibrium again. She'd found Sam fascinating while she'd thought he might be insane; she was sure she was falling in love with him now that he was acting more normal, though she expected something to send him off the rails, sooner or later.

They didn't talk about Gene outside of work often, though Annie inquired after him a few times. Sam's smile told her as much as his answers, not least because she knew as well as anyone in CID whether Gene was well or not. She never asked, "How are you getting on?" in so many words, but she could see that, too.

Most of the time, it didn't bother her one way or the other, though there were a handful of nights when she asked Sam if he was busy and he gave her that smile, the one that didn't have a thing to do with her, and said, "Yes, sorry." Those were evenings Annie spent with girlfriends from university, if she could find them, or doing anything but wondering what they were up to.

She didn't have much of a chance to talk to Gene about anything but work, and that was all right, most of the time. There were a few evenings at the pub when she sat with him and Sam and thought that he was giving her the eye more than he would've before. He didn't leave off saying terrible things about women in the police force, for all Sam frowned at him, but there were more times when he listened to her as if she knew what she was talking about, and that made up for the comments, mostly.

Still, the first time Gene remembered Annie's fondness for Dorothy Sayers and mentioned it a week or so after she'd first mentioned, she was surprised. She didn't have words for what they were to each other apart from work, not quite friends, not courting, but growing closer with every hour they spent together at a little round table, talking about anything that occurred to them. More than that, she was used to paying attention to what he thought, but she didn't expect him to be listening closely to her, let alone caring what books she read.

Sometimes she caught herself looking at Gene, remembering the night she'd kissed him and wondering what it would've been like if she'd done more than that. She couldn't imagine that Sam would've minded; he'd come that close to encouraging her to stay as much as Gene had. On the nights she spent alone, she thought about those possibilities as much as anything, though the idea of making them real still made her blush in the dark of her empty room.

It was a different thing entirely to see him at work, hung-over and drinking at ten-o'clock, glaring at her over his scotch. "Any leads on your arsonist, Cartwright?" he asked, as angrily as if she'd set all three fires herself or kept him up until all hours.

Whatever had made it impossible for him to sleep, it wasn't her fault. Sam had been with her, and she was nearly certain he'd gone right home when he'd left. "A few, maybe, Guv." She couldn't let herself think of him as Gene there. It was bad enough that she slipped sometimes and called Sam by his given name, but she knew she hadn't earned it with Gene in anyone else's eyes.

"They're burning my city down round my ears and you're sitting behind your desk? You're spending too much time listening to DI Tyler and his paper-shuffling ideas." Gene--the Guv gave Sam a dire look. "Take a plod with you and knock on some doors, Miss Marple."

Annie set down her notes and opened another file. She'd been through enough, looking for patterns and priors, that it was a relief to see anything that wasn't buff, but she wasn't sure enough yet to waste time talking to people who probably didn't know anything. "I will, as soon as I finish cross-referencing."

"Cross-referencing." He said it like a curse.

"What's the good of knocking on doors if you've got the wrong ones?" Sam asked, coming to her defense. She wished he hadn't; she didn't need it.

The Guv grabbed him by the collar and pulled him to his feet. "Step into my office, Tyler. I'll give you a cross-referencing you won't soon forget."

Sam went with him, not protesting the manhandling. "She's doing the right thing, Guv," he said.

"Stop making excuses for her," the Guv said, and pushed him through the office door.

Annie winced and ignored everyone else's looks long enough to skim the summary of the Yates arson case. There was a mention of a Mrs Betty Jackson who was one of the neighbors reporting, and she'd shown up in three other arson cases in the last two years. There were no ominous bangs or shouts from the Guv's office, so when she'd finished reading, she went to see what she could add to the conversation. She took the other files with her. "I think it's Betty Jackson," she said as she opened the door.

The Guv was smoking at his desk, his glass fuller than when she'd seen it before. Sam's shirt was slightly askew, but he was standing across the room from the Guv and he didn't look like he was in pain. "Betty Jackson?" the Guv said. "Never heard of her."

"She lived down the street from Tom Gates, who was convicted of burning down a shed, and there were those lads who tried to set the cobbler's on fire." Annie handed the relevant files to Sam, complete with her cross-references. "And then there was the Yates case. She called in the blaze herself."

Sam smiled at her. "Well done. Now all we have to do is find her."

"Set a thief to catch a thief, set a bird to catch a bird," the Guv said. "If it is your Mrs Jackson. Married women don't set fires, Cartwright. They stick their heads in ovens."

Annie pressed her lips together to keep in her frustration. It was one thing for Sam to have a row with the Guv, but she couldn't, even though she was sure she was right. "We'll see, sir."

Sam had the folders open already, juggling them to check her notes. "Do we have a picture of her?"

"I don't think so, but all the fires have been within a few blocks of her last recorded address."

"Get out of my damn office, then, and find her," the Guv said, standing up. "And take a plod with you. And Chris."

Annie backed toward the door. She was sure he wasn't angry with her as much as with Mrs Jackson, but she didn't want to stay long enough to find out. "All right, sir."

"Let Skelton drive," he said as she opened the door, loud enough that Chris's head turned. "Last thing we need is a lady detective crashing our cars."

Annie gave Chris a tight smile. "I'll give you the address," she said.

"Right-o," he said, and they went as quick as they could.

Mrs Jackson wasn't at home, and no one on the block had seen her in a week. By the fourth house, Annie was grateful that the Guv hadn't sent her with Ray or John; Chris wasn't good at this bit of the job, but he left it to her rather than pretending he was. When they'd gone up and down the streets enough that their knuckles were aching, Chris said, "We could radio in. Or you could, while I drive us."

Annie looked at the Jackson residence one last time and nodded. It was late afternoon and they'd missed lunch, though they'd had a cuppa with Mrs Benchley at number 76. "We might as well go back." It felt like admitting that she'd been wrong, though she was sure she wasn't.

Sam met her in the hall on the way back in. "I haven't eaten yet," he said.

"Neither have we." Annie glanced at Chris, who looked from her to Sam and shrugged.

"You go on. I'm not hungry."

"Aren't you? I could murder a sandwich." Annie smiled at Sam. "Best if we stick to the canteen for now, though. My feet are aching."

Sam nodded, and they went. There were a few scraps left from lunch, not a real meal but enough to get by on, and nearly all the tables were empty.

Annie took her greasy sandwich to one by the wall, well away from a few PCs eating by themselves. She'd eaten half of it by the time Sam joined her with a bowl of soup. "Sorry," she said. "It was a miserable day."

"I know." Sam frowned. "Look, I'm sorry about earlier."

"You tried to help. Not your fault."

"Still, I am. And I'm not the only one." Sam gave a glance round before he lowered his voice again. "He didn't send me to say sorry, but he did say if you wanted a decent dinner, he has a bit of steak, and we're both welcome."

Annie tried to imagine sitting calmly across the table from Gene while he was in such a state as he'd been earlier. She wondered how anyone could manage to eat near him without shouting at him or getting into a fight, not that he'd fight her properly. "You go," she said, and took a step back. "I don't reckon I'm all that welcome."

She hadn't seen Sam look so miserable over something she'd said in months. "Please?"

Annie shook her head. "Best not, really."

He sighed. "I wish--"

Ray called to them from the door, puffing with exertion. "Boss, Cartwright, we've got a call in about another fire."

That put paid to the idea of a quiet dinner with anyone for another few hours yet, and they were off to look into it. Annie didn't know enough about investigating arsonists and the forensics boffins were still going over the place when they arrived. "What do you think, sir?" she asked Sam.

"Looks like the other jobs, but we won't know enough to be certain until they work out how it started." Sam shook his head and looked at the burned-out area. "That, and we're lucky they're not doing these jobs in the estates, or we'd be looking at an even bigger mess."

"Excellent work, there, Tyler," the Guv said. "You could ring the Gazette and tell them all that, official police news. Don't know a damn thing yet, but we're glad they're not burning down a whole lot of buildings at a go."

"What do you think, then?" Sam asked him.

He shrugged. "Let's give it a walk-round, see what we see, and then I need my supper."

Annie glanced at Sam, who gave her a crooked smile. "Right, then. The sooner we're done, the sooner we're off." She took out her notebook and stayed well away from everything that looked like it could be evidence after some analysis, making notes on the burn patterns and everything else she noticed.

"It smells of petrol over here," Sam called from halfway round the building. Annie and one of the forensics men joined him, but that was all Annie could tell.

"Doesn't look like anything exploded, exactly, so it probably wasn't a tank." She sighed. "Maybe it's time to go for the day. I hope it all comes clear when we know more, because right now I don't feel like I know anything."

Sam touched her shoulder in a way that was probably meant to be reassuring. It would have worked better if she weren't sleeping with him; the warmth of his hand through her shirt made her think about holding him, and that had no place at a crime scene. "There will be something, sooner or later. You've been working on it long enough I'm sure it'll fall together."

"Thank you," she said, and smiled at him without trying hard enough to keep everything she was thinking out of her expression.

Sam smiled back. "You do good work."

Annie looked at the remains of the building. "Not fast enough, sometimes."

"We can't solve the crime before it's committed." Sam went to finish his circuit of the building.

To keep her mind off of the conversation she knew she'd have to have as soon as she went back to the car, Annie focused on the details of the area the petrol had been: near a window, judging from the glass, and one wall away from the back door. She sketched it roughly for her notes, losing herself in the gray and black.

"Onto something good, are you?" the Guv asked, and she startled a little, turning to face him.

"I don't know, sir. They could've kept a can of petrol for any number of reasons."

"I'll make sure the forensics boys look it over good and proper." He gave her a look that didn't seem to have anything to do with the job at hand, half a dare and half flirting. "Are you ready to be off, then?"

Annie looked at her notes, then at the unrevealing burnt things she'd been drawing. "Yes, sir. If you'd just drop me home, I'd be grateful."

"What was that?" the Guv asked.

She squared her shoulders and met his eyes. "If you'd just drop me home, sir, that would be lovely." She hated standing up to him, but she was going to have to learn sometime, and this was good practice.

"That's what I thought you said." He backed up a few steps. "Come on, then, Cartwright, leave your cinders."

"Yes, sir. I don't know what to make of them, anyway."

He started off going the long way round the building, and she followed him. When they were well away from everyone else, with the wind blowing ashes and smoke around their feet, he said, "So Dorothy didn't find you earlier, then."

It took her a moment to put together that he didn't mean Dorothy Keane from the women's department. "We did talk about this evening, but I have plans."

"A night out on the town with your beau, is it?" He made it sound like an accusation.

"No." Annie stepped around a pile of broken glass. "He said he'd be busy. Just--plans."

"I've made plans myself, but you're throwing a spanner in them." He gave her another assessing look. "Don't stay in and wash your hair on my account."

Annie bit her lip. Gene was being far less unpleasant than he had earlier, but she still didn't know what she could do beyond eat his food and stammer at her plate. "I don't want to be in the way."

"For Christ's sake, girl, you won't be. You aren't." He looked toward the car and Annie followed his gaze; Sam was already there, waiting. "I bloody hate chatting about this nonsense like a pack of school girls, but your boy there's been after me all day to make peace, build bridges, mend fences. What are your plans?"

She shook her head. "Stay home for the evening. Have a kip."

"Recover from another wild night with your gentleman caller?"

The suggestion made her blush, and then she thought of how well he could probably guess at the wildness of most of her nights with Sam. That made it worse. She stared at the ground under her feet and walked more slowly. "Sir."

"Come on, petal, we'll be here all night at this rate. My stomach's threatening a jailbreak out through my back as it is." He took her arm, more gently than she expected of him. His hands were warm even through his gloves.

Annie knew she could pull away and not make a fuss about the whole thing, but he was already bothered about something and putting it off would only make it worse. "Sorry," she said, and kept up, though he was striding along at a fast clip. "Do you think this fire's related to the Jackson case, then?"

He patted her arm. "I wouldn't have brought you along if I didn't. We'll know better by the end of the day tomorrow."

Sam raised his eyebrows at her when they reached the car. She let go of the Guv's arm and gave Sam a little shrug. "Did you see anything else interesting, sir?" she asked him as she got in the back, trying to keep the conversation on professional grounds as long as she could.

He turned to look at her, looking more amused than anything else. "One or two things, but not to do with the building."

Annie looked at the back of the Guv's head and then out the window, feeling her cheeks heat up with embarrassment again. "Don't tell me you're the jealous type, Sam."

He laughed. "Of you? That'd be hypocritical, wouldn't it? Just wondering if you found any evidence."

"The hell you are." Gene patted his knee as they went round a corner too fast. "Don't you fret, Gladys, I'm not stealing your girl."

"We are in the middle of a case," Sam said, but there was a smile at the corners of his mouth that didn't have anything to do with work.

"'Of course you're not stealing anything," Annie said, keeping her voice light. She couldn't imagine running off with Gene and abandoning Sam whatever happened. "It's just supper."

"Right."

Sam frowned over his shoulder at her, but didn't protest.

Annie expected to be sent off to the kitchen when they arrived, but Gene said, "Right, you two, the telly's all yours. Keep your trousers on, Tyler, and upstairs outside only before supper, Cartwright."

She felt herself flush yet again; she was already looking forward to the day when she wasn't embarrassed to hear him talk about sex. "Don't you want a hand cooking?"

"I can cook a piece of meat as well as the next man," Gene said, his chin up as if she'd offended his dignity.

"The hell you can." Sam pushed past him into the kitchen, which was dark, but looked as though it had been tidied recently. "And it doesn't count as a meal unless there's some kind of vegetable in it."

Gene gave Annie a crooked smile before he turned to follow Sam. "A proper bloke would take me up on my kind offer of a meal and a moment with his sweetheart rather than rummaging through my fridge."

Sam made a disgusted noise. "What was that before it turned into a problem for forensics?"

"How should I know?" Gene asked. "I didn't put it in there in the first place."

"Celery, I think. Possibly."

Annie watched them from the doorway with their heads together, peering at the greens in the fridge as if it was a crime scene. It looked normal and bizarre at the same time, the way they stood together in a normal context, maybe a hair closer. "Can I help?"

Sam straightened up with a green pepper in his hand. "How are you with onions?" he asked her.

"They make me cry, but that's all right."

Gene looked over Sam's shoulder again. "Where'd you hide the onions?"

"In the cupboard where you had them before." Sam closed the fridge and stepped around Gene. "There's not room for three in here, but the settee's free."

Gene folded his arms and leaned against the wall opposite the fridge. "I didn't ask you over to cook for me. Either of you."

"You knew I would," Sam said mildly.

Annie shook her head. "It needs doing, and we might as well help. Which cupboard has the onions?"

"To the left of the sink," Sam said.

Gene cleared his throat. "I can manage the meat unless you're going to shove me out of the kitchen in my own house."

"Let's get the onions started first," Sam said. "They'll help the flavor."

It was crowded in the kitchen with Annie dealing with the onion, then the pepper, while Sam put together enough herbs for a Christmas turkey and Gene stood by, watching, but it got the job done, even when Gene said, "I can manage from here," and dropped a few thin slabs of meat in with the onion.

"You're sure?" Sam asked him, still hovering by as though he was about to take the fork out of Gene's hand and help stir.

"I haven't starved to death yet." Gene thumped him on the shoulder. "This is the easy bit."

Annie laughed and covered her mouth, but not before they both turned to look at her. "Sorry," she said. "I was just thinking."

"It gets dangerous when birds do that," Gene said, and poked at the beef.

If he meant that sort of thing, if he didn't care what she thought, he wouldn't have pushed at her until she came home with them. "I was thinking that we work well together," she said, and glanced at Gene. "All three of us."

Sam grinned at her. "That's good to hear."

"There, she's smarter than you," Gene said, nodding at her. "Doesn't need stacks of evidence, just gut feelings."

"I've had plenty of evidence." Annie picked up the cutting board and gave it a wash, then left it in the rack because the only tea towel she could find didn't look as though it had been washed in far too long. "Maybe most of it didn't have to do with both of you, with--" she couldn't quite call this "love," not yet, not to the Guv. "I mean, I trust you both with my life."

"That's a start." Gene flipped the meat over. "Get us a plate, Sam."

Sam reached for one of the cupboards and pulled down four plates, heavy beige china that looked as though it had seen better days. "We didn't even set the table," he said, sounding disappointed.

"Go to it. You can fold the serviettes into little flowers and all."

Annie said, "It's all right, Sam." The informality of it all made it easier to take. No one was standing on the slightest bit of ceremony, and she couldn't imagine many things farther from a swanky restaurant than Gene's kitchen with its chipped porcelain sink. "Where do you keep the silver?"

The tablecloth had seen better days, and Sam didn't do anything particular to the serviettes except put them in their places. They had water glasses all round, though there was a bottle of scotch at the far end of the table and another set of glasses waiting. Once the food was on the table, there wasn't much time for talking; it had been a long day, and lunch had barely merited the name.

"This is very nice," Annie said when she'd eaten enough to be civil, meaning the meal and the company. Sam had cooked her all manner of things, some of which she couldn't recall the names of, but the simple meal was just as good.

"Our Gladys is going to make someone an excellent wife one of these days," Gene said, but there was a gentleness in his eyes that undercut the taunt.

"You did half the cooking," Sam pointed out, his water in his hand. "Well, a third of it."

"And you did it well." Annie smiled at Gene. "I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't--well, it wasn't this."

Gene leaned back in his chair. "What were you afraid of, then?"

The mental images she came up with were lurid, wildly sexual, and not fit for the table or much of anywhere else. She could hardly tell him she was shocked that they were all still dressed at half six instead of carrying on right there on the table, though it was true. "That you'd not be yourselves, somehow."

Sam reached over and took her right hand. His fingers were cold, but his smile wasn't. "That's not going to be a problem."

"It has been." Annie gave him a rueful look. "I don't know how many times you've caught me off guard, Sam, with one thing or another. You've been better lately, but you can't blame me for worrying."

"All that's over now." Sam looked as earnest as he ever had, and she wanted to trust him so badly. "I promise you."

"Speaking of promises," Gene said, and got up to retrieve the scotch. "How much for you, Cartwright?"

She squeezed Sam's hand and thought of her dirty fantasies, and how much she'd rather remember anything that happened. "Just a splash, thanks."

"Tyler?"

He waved off the offer with his free hand. "I'm all right."

Gene shook his head and poured; Annie's splash turned into three fingers in a tumbler, and he gave Sam the same amount. "Really, no thank you," Sam said, and moved it to Gene's place at the table.

"You'll need it," Gene said, and brought the bottle when he came to sit down. "Right. Promises."

Annie sipped hers carefully. She was no judge of scotch, and she didn't have enough of a head for drink to finish the whole thing and believe she wouldn't be silly. "What sort of promises are you thinking about, Guv?"

He pointed at where they were holding hands. "That sort. The sort a respectable bloke makes to a bird from a good family, soon as he knows what he's got in her."

Sam sighed. "That's a ways off yet, isn't it?"

"I should think so," Annie said, though the longer she held onto Sam, the more she thought about how long they'd been dancing round each other.

Gene snorted. "When did he get in your head with all that procedure nonsense, Miss Marple? You're not solving a crime, here. Either you know it's going to work, or you know it's not." He raised his glass to her. "And you said--you trust him with your life."

Sam was holding onto her fingers hard enough to hurt, but she didn't want to pull her hand away. "That's not the same thing as being sure you wanting to spend it together."

"Listen to your bloody instincts for once in your life," Gene said, leaning forward until he was close enough to kiss Sam. "Do you want this, or don't you?"

Annie couldn't work out whether the sound she made was a laugh or a sob. "Guv, that's--"

He scowled at her. "I cooked your dinner, Cartwright. Least you can do is use my name."

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, telling her stomach to settle. "Gene. What are you trying to get us to say?"

"I've seen your pay packet, petal. You can keep Sammy here in the style to which he's become accustomed--and don't make that face, a rag and bone man could keep you in that bedsit, Tyler. I can't have you two swooning all over my division every day unless you make it official, or the lads are going to think the worse of all of us, but especially you, Annie."

"Oh my God," Sam said, but she could hear the smile in his voice, and it was there when she looked at him. "I can't believe you, Gene."

"You're the one who's been skipping through the office trailing daisies for months. I've put Phyllis off when she asked, and Ray, but this fine morning, Chris was giving you both a look. When he's noticing, the world's got its eye on you, wondering how many coppers it takes to lift a WDC's skirts." Gene took a sip of scotch. "Time to break it off for your own dignity and everybody else's or pull yourself together and have a chat with Annie's dad."

The suggestion hit too close to things she still couldn't bear to think about. Annie shook her head and swallowed hard before she could talk. "That'd be difficult, as he's passed on."

Gene winced. "Sorry, Annie love. Uncles? Grandfather?"

"None to speak of." She tried to imagine who she'd send Sam to if she thought he needed to talk to someone like her father. Gene was as close to that role as anyone could be. That was a mess in and of itself, and one she didn't dare say aloud.

Sam ran his thumb across her palm. "We're all adults. I'm not asking anyone for permission to court Annie except Annie."

Gene smacked his hand on the table. "So ask her, you babbling idiot."

Sam looked at her and took a deep breath, then pinched the bridge of his nose. "You're mad. And it's too soon. And even if it wasn't too soon, I haven't exactly been to the high street jeweler's looking for a way to make anything official, because, let me say it one more time, a few months is not a long enough courtship to be thinking of these things."

"Your trouble is you get in your own way half the time." Gene put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a matchbox. "This'll do."

Annie thought about leaving, right then, walking out and pretending she'd never felt anything more for Sam--for either of them--than respect. It sounded cold and bleak compared to staying, to trusting them the way she'd been trusting them. This was safer than anything else she could remember, for all it would've made anyone stare if she'd tried to explain it. "There's more than one kind of official," she said. "Not as though we're going to run down to the church just now."

Sam laughed, but he was pale as he took the matchbox from Gene and opened it one-handed. "How long have you been carrying this around?" he asked, holding up a ring with a diamond chip in it.

Gene looked at him, then at Annie, shamefaced. "Since I came home and found it sitting right here, right atop a note." He tapped on the table next to his plate. "It was my mum's, then--"

"Oh, Gene," Annie said, and pulled her hand free from Sam's, wanting to reach for him, though she stopped herself in time.

"It's not worth pawning, and I'm as likely to find another bird who's willing to wed me as Ray is to start coming to the station in skirts." Gene shrugged as if it meant nothing, or as if the pain was so old it wasn't worth admitting to. "Someone might as well get some use out of it, but if you chuck Sammy, I'd like it back."

Sam turned the ring in his fingers, examining it. "I could get someone to price it and pay you back."

"You could bloody well not." Gene grabbed Sam's wrist hard enough that his knuckles were white. "It's not for you, though it might fit your pretty fingers. You give it to Annie, if she wants it, or you give it back to me."

"That's too generous," Annie protested. The thought of taking it made her stomach twist--it wasn't Sam's to give, and if she took it, every time she looked at her hand, she'd think of the two of them.

Gene held up one hand, his broad fingers spread wide. "The damn thing doesn't suit me, sweetheart."

"No, of course not, but still, it's worth something to you. What do you want for it?"

He waved a finger at her. "Remind me to bring you in next time I need someone interrogated. You're coming up with better questions than my DI."

Annie smiled at the praise, but didn't let him get away with it, however good it felt. "Thank you. What do you want, Gene?"

He let Sam's wrist go. "If I have to watch you two making cow's eyes at each other, I'll be less likely to lose my supper knowing I had a part in it."

Sam put it down and rubbed his eyes. "As long as you're not trying to marry me off to get rid of me."

Annie sniffed. She'd had romantic notions as a girl about what it might be like to be proposed to, and they were nothing at all like this. Still, this felt more real than any of those violin-music fantasies. "He'd have to find someone else for that. I'm not going anywhere."

"Good girl." Gene smiled at her, then leaned back in his chair. "Well, Sammy, do you love our Cartwright here, or are you toying with her delicate affections?"

Sam went pink and stood up. "God, you're a bastard." He came round the table and took Annie's hand again. "We could go," he offered, and set the ring next to her plate. "Take a walk, talk about this. Clear our heads."

Annie's head felt clearer than it had any right to between the scotch and the conversation. "I'm all right." She stood up and put her hand on his shoulder and pulled him close to whisper in his ear. "And I love you."

Sam hugged her tightly. "Doesn't mean we have to do anything," he whispered back.

"If there's one thing I know certain sure, it's that I could look all over the world and never find anyone else like you."

Sam sighed. "We'll make it a good long engagement, then."

Annie laughed and kissed his cheek. "As long as we can get away with, though I reckon Gene will be counting the days."

"I'm sure. Should I get down on my knee?" he asked, still keeping his voice low.

The image seemed more ridiculous than romantic. A borrowed ring, a dusty room, and Sam on his knee, made a strange thought. "Do you want to?"

"I'm not sure I'd live it down if I didn't." Sam let her go and picked up the ring, then half-knelt while she covered her mouth and tried not to laugh at him. It wasn't every day someone proposed to her, after all, and it would hardly do to put him off.

"There's a lad," Gene said, sounding satisfied.

Sam shook his head and focused on her, taking her hand. "Annie. Will you--will you marry me?"

She said, "Yes," and started laughing in earnest when he put the ring on her finger. It was slightly too big. "I might have to leave this off, though." She helped Sam to his feet and twisted the ring on her finger to show him, putting aside the thoughts of the last woman who wore it and why she might have left it behind.

"Nothing doing, Cartwright." Gene got up and clapped her on the shoulder. "One of my snouts knows a bloke who'll fix that right up for you."

"We'll set it right," Sam said, and kissed her. He tasted like rosemary and scotch.

Annie smiled against his mouth, then let him go enough to smile at Gene. "How long have you been planning this?" She didn't quite say "sir," but it was closer than it might otherwise have been.

"I don't put any stock in elaborate plans." Gene held out his hand to her. "Show us how it fits, then."

It wouldn't go flying if she shook her hand, but it wasn't secure. She didn't want to lose it any more than she wanted to break the promise it represented, for all she hadn't been expecting either. She put her hand in Gene's--more callused than Sam's, broad, warm--and shrugged. "It'll do, but I'd want it fixed before--" she swallowed, trying to imagine getting from that headlong moment to a wedding, however simple "--before I do much more than show it off to prove I have it."

He ran his fingers along her ring finger and she shivered. "Congratulations," Gene said, looking remarkably self-satisfied for someone who'd just seen someone he cared about promised to someone else. He'd sealed the promise, sure as anything.

"Thank you," Annie said. She kissed him, meaning it to be light, but it couldn't stay that way.

Gene caught her up in his arms, one hand on her waist, dipping lower. "Well, now," he said, close enough that she could feel his breath on her lips. "A word of advice, sweetheart: don't do that with all the folk who say that to you."

"It would ruin their compliment," Sam said, though he didn't sound in the least put out that she'd gone straight from his arms to Gene's.

Annie kept her expression calm, though there were butterflies in her stomach. "I'll make sure I only kiss people who offer me a wedding ring, sir." It was one thing to know she trusted him with her life, but this was more than that, more than what she'd do to protect other people. This was what she would do to protect herself, and not from them, but from the rest of the world. No one else would know that she'd sworn herself to both of them, but it was enough that they knew it.

Gene stroked her cheek. "It's going to be like that, is it?"

She pressed her fingers together to keep the ring on and studied his face, looking for any hint that he hadn't meant it, that he wanted her gone, for all the times he'd flirted with her. "I think so."

Sam laughed and put his arms round both of them. "If that wasn't what you meant, you shouldn't have built such a solid trail of evidence. You've fit yourself up."

"It's up to you, Annie," Gene said, no humor in his expression. "You don't owe me anything."

She thought about easing out of their arms and leaving them to each other, whatever they'd do without her, of waiting for Sam to ring her up and wondering where he was, which sounded much worse than knowing. She'd never thought of this sort of thing as a possibility, but there they were. "Then that's all right," Annie said, and kissed Gene again, letting it get dirtier still before she pulled away, yearning for more and sure that if she kept on, she'd fulfill her own ideas of what dinner might've been. She couldn't work out yet whether she loved him--if she did, it was nothing like what she felt for Sam--but he made her dizzy and warm, and that counted for a lot. More than that, he made her feel safe.

Sam let out a shuddering breath and squeezed her shoulder. "I could get used to that."

"You and your surveillance." Gene swatted him on the back of his head. "Those who can, do, Sammy-boy."

"They also serve who only stand and wait," Sam said, and kissed Gene.

It looked more tender than anything she'd seen them do together. Sometimes they seemed as if they were moments from shouting or throwing each other across the room, but this was more like moments from removing each other's trousers. That eased something in Annie's heart; she knew as clear as anything that they cared about each other, but it would've been hard to get on with them if they expressed their affection by being at odds all the time. This kiss, on the other hand, looked like something she could bear to be around, though part of her mind was still amazed at herself for the thought.

"There, now," Gene said, turning his head. "If you keep on like that, Annie'll think we've gone soft."

She pressed her lips together and glanced downward, making the look slow and obvious. "I wouldn't worry about that, no."

Sam snickered first, and then Gene raised his eyebrows and scowled at Sam. "What've you done to our Annie? Corrupting a good, innocent girl."

"She was that way when we met," Sam said. "Just more quietly, around you."

"What is this city coming to with plonks making filthy jokes?"

Annie leaned on Sam's shoulder. "And coppers kissing each other, two--worse, three--at a go."

Sam kissed her hair. "Shameful, that's what I call it."

Gene patted her on the shoulder and let them both go. "There's work to be done tomorrow, petal. Best get your celebrating out of the way before it's gone midnight."

"Celebrating?" Annie put her arm round Sam's waist and tried to work out what she'd got herself into. The possibilities seemed endless, intimidating, and obscene. "Maybe it'd be better to do one bit of it at a time."

"Whatever you need," Sam said, holding onto her tightly. "Well, apart from time to think about whether you want to get bloody well engaged, I suppose. That one's off the table already."

Annie laughed and straightened up, aware the whole time that Gene was watching them. "I should be going, I suppose. Would you see me home?"

"Of course," Sam said. "Just a moment."

He kissed Gene again, long and lingering enough that Annie started to wonder if she was going to have to make her own way home after all. Before she could joke about it, Gene let him go. "Take care of our girl, now."

"I will," Sam said, and he added, "Thank you," so softly Annie barely heard him.

"Good night," Annie said, and made an attempt to kiss Gene's cheek that would've worked perfectly if he hadn't turned towards her and kissed her hard enough to make her want to stay.

"Good night, love," he said, while she blinked and waited for her heart to settle again.

It was difficult to leave, but the thought of what might happen if she didn't was still too much to take. "See you tomorrow," she said, and pulled Sam out the door while she had the nerve.

"I can't believe we did that," Sam said.

"Neither can I, quite, but I'm not sorry," she admitted.

Every time she looked at him that evening, he was either smiling at her or trying to pretend he hadn't just been smiling. He held her hand the whole way home, and every few blocks he ran his thumb over her fingers, turning the ring just enough that she remembered it was there.

At the station, Phyllis noticed the ring first, as she was the best detective who'd look at Annie's hands rather than her breasts or bottom. "Cartwright, do you have something to tell us?" she asked with a broad wink, her voice loud enough that everyone turned to look at her.

Annie was in the middle of going over the forensics information coming in from the arson site. She looked up from the file and said, "I'm sure it was Mrs Jackson set that fire," she said. "See, if you compare the information on the patterns of the petrol, they're similar, and concentrated in the kitchen, both times."

"Not what I meant, but good," Phyllis said, but Sam was already coming over to Annie's desk, looking over her shoulder.

"That's something to go on," he said, and came that close to kissing her cheek. "That'd mean she was still in town."

Annie nodded. "And she's probably not going so very far, if she's been here this long."

Sam smiled at her. "We'll get the uniforms out with her picture. Good work."

Phyllis cleared her throat. "About that ring, Annie," she said, and this time everyone turned to look at her.

"Oh, that," Annie said, as if she could possibly have forgot it, or that Sam was close enough to touch, as he had been all night. She'd been fidgeting with the band all day, not meaning to draw attention to it, but it was odd having something on her finger. "I was going to say later, but DI Tyler and I--we're engaged."

Sam kissed her cheek and gave her the soppiest smile she'd ever seen from him.

"Lovely, sweetheart," the Guv said while the rest of the station went oo-er, and swiped a biscuit off of her desk with one hand. "I'm sure we're all proud of you. You two can have a nice little honeymoon hunting down your Mrs Jackson."

Ray sniggered. "Aw, c'mon, Guv, give the lovebirds the day off. Tyler's looking right shagged out already."

"There's no time for that nonsense," Sam said, glaring at him.

Annie rolled her eyes at everyone and turned over a paper, meaning to go back to it. She didn't want any more attention than she normally got. "I know we all have work to do."

"Well, I'm that glad for you," Phyllis said, smiling, and hugged her. She smelled of lilies of the valley. "And--and I was coming down for something else. Right. DI Tyler, there's a girl as wants to talk to you."

"What about?" Sam said, and without a backward glance, he was off again.

The Jackson case turned out nearly as Annie had predicted it, and they caught Mrs Jackson just before she set another building on fire. Annie did all her own reports, putting in everything she'd worked out, and two days later, she and Sam gave the Guv all their files.

"There," Sam said, putting them on his desk. They made a good solid thwack.

"Excellent work," the Guv said, flipping through the pages. "Now you've something to celebrate. First round's on me tonight."

Sam cleared his throat. "If that's the kind of celebration you want, Guv."

Annie stared at him for a moment until she understood him, and then she stared longer, wondering how long it would take until she had the nerve to say something that was an obvious proposition to both of them when she wasn't drunk.

"It's not just your case, Tyler," the Guv said--Gene said, giving Annie one of those looks that made her sure he was imagining her naked. "Seems to me we skimped on your engagement party, petal. We could drink the Arms dry, or--"

Annie smiled. Put like that, it was easy to say, "I don't think I'd hold up my end of that, sir. A little party's more to my taste."

Sam sighed and gave her a look that was equal parts grateful and hungry. "Well, then."

"Right." Gene picked up the thick file and waved it at them. "You go file your nails and pretend this is incomplete until the lads head out for the pub."

Annie nodded. It'd be easier to slip out without seeming as if they were going to the same place if everyone else had gone. "I've a few other files that could use some work anyway, sir."

"Isn't that always the way?" Sam said.

"Don't get too caught up in it, Gladys, or I'll drag your fiancee out of here without you the minute the coast's clear." Gene raised his voice and said, "Vital bloody evidence!"

"Sorry, sir." Annie took the file before he could get inspired and throw it across the room. "I didn't mean to--"

"I don't care what you meant." He strode across the office and banged the door open. "Get back to your desk and stay there till it's ready. You, too, Tyler."

"We're doing our best, Guv," Sam protested.

"Then do better." Gene went back into his office and grabbed a bottle.

Sam managed to keep a straight face as well as Annie did until they were back at their desks. Chris whistled softly. "Rough luck, Boss. You need help with it?"

Annie sat up straight. "It's my case, too, DC Skelton. I'll do what I have to do."

Two hours later, Ray looked in on the Guv, then came out again, shaking his head and giving Sam a hateful look. "He says we're to go without him as he has to mind Tyler and Cartwright."

There was a general chorus of chuckles. "That's what happens when love hits, innit?" Geoff asked. "Prick goes hard, mind goes soft."

Annie kept her eyes on her typewriter, where she was working on an abduction case, and ignored them. It was all of two minutes before they were gone, trailing a cloud of cigarette smoke behind them.

"Right," Sam said, and put the files back together in their original order. "Unless you've changed your mind?"

Annie sorted hers and brought them to him. "Not me." She kissed his cheek, feeling as though if she did anything more, she'd get distracted.

Gene came out of his office and looked around the empty sea of desks with his hands behind his back. "Good, reliable lads," he said, and clapped once. "Best give them another couple of minutes head start, or I'll be tucking Tyler inside my coat and trying to sneak by Manchester's finest."

"Let's save that uncomfortable-sounding tactic for a more pressing need." Sam gave him the file.

"Something to look forward to."

Annie smiled at them both and got her purse. "Well, where are we off to tonight?"

Gene raised his eyebrows. "A fine figure of a lass like you, you'd break Tyler's flimsy bed in half just looking at it." She blushed, though she'd had the same thought herself.

Sam spluttered. "That's a hell of a thing to say to anyone."

"You're lucky you don't wake up on the floor every night. Between the two of you, you'd break its last spring."

Annie cleared her throat. "I don't know what I'd say to the landlady if you came back to mine. She's already been after me about the young man who's courting me."

Gene nodded. "That ring shuts her up a treat, does it?"

She ran her thumb over the band for the hundredth time that day. "I haven't had a chance to show her yet with being here late over the Jackson case." Annie looked round. "Do you think they've gone?"

"Likely. I'll have a look, and if I'm not back in five minutes, follow me." Gene went, looking as much like he had a reason to be scowling as ever.

Sam smiled at Annie. "When I woke up this morning, I thought I was the luckiest fool on the planet."

"You're not a fool," she said. For a moment, she hesitated to reach for his hand, but then she remembered that it was all official and she had no reason to be subtle. "Sometimes you're rather an idiot, but everyone is on occasion."

He laughed. "Thank you for that."

"You're welcome."

Sam kissed her lightly, then pulled back, frowning. "I don't even know that he has a bite of food in the place worth eating."

"I wasn't thinking about dinner much," she admitted. "But if you're fussed, I'm sure we could make a stop."

"I haven't done this much, but I know you shouldn't get into it drunk, and it's best not to let Gene get too hungry on general principles. He loses his temper readily enough after a good meal."

Annie imagined dealing with the sort of shouting he'd done to ease things for them, except in earnest, at close range. It made her wince to think of how often Sam might have had to deal with such a thing, and it reminded her of a question she'd managed not to ask when it was none of her business. Now it was, in a way, so she nerved herself up and asked. "How did you manage to--to begin things in the first place?"

Sam looked round, then shook his head. "I'll tell you over supper, whatever it is. Shall we go?"

"Fair enough." Annie took his hand. "If anyone sees us, we can always say we slipped out together, and at least they won't wonder why."

Sam went through the last greengrocer's open in the evening like it was a crime scene and came out with enough food to last Annie a week. He had less luck at the butcher's, but all told supper was lovely.

"You were going to tell me a story," Annie reminded Sam in a lull in conversation.

"A story?" Gene asked. "Is this some twisted after-dinner tradition you've worked up between yourselves?"

"No." Sam glanced at Annie and smiled. "Well, maybe, sort of. It's a short story, honestly, Annie."

"Go on, then."

Gene reached for the rice and got himself another helping, though he'd complained about the spices to start with. "What's our story for tonight, then? The Wizard of Oz and how Dorothy was a very naughty girl with the Scarecrow?"

Annie laughed. "Maybe another time."

Sam waved his fork at Gene. "How a perfectly nice man hit his head hard enough to consider spending time with the likes of you."

"A 'perfectly nice man'? Clearly you're telling fairy stories."

Sam snorted. "Exactly." Gene smirked at his own joke.

"Go on," Annie said.

"Once upon a time there was a--well, a reasonably nice man who drank a little too much."

Gene shook his head. "You weren't drunk."

"I didn't say I was drunk," Sam said, his tone growing tense, "I said I drank a little too much, and you'll admit that was so, or I'd never have said what I said."

"Fair enough."

Annie wasn't going to argue the precise terms. "What did you say?"

Sam cleared his throat. "Something along the lines of 'I rather fancy you.'"

"It wasn't the words you should be telling her about, Sammy-boy, it was that kiss." Gene stabbed a bean with his fork. "No sense of priorities, your Sam," he said to Annie.

Annie covered her mouth. "Really?"

"I'd been drinking," he said defensively. "And I don't so much remember the kiss as thinking, halfway through it, that I was probably about to die."

Gene chuckled. "Call yourself a detective, do you."

"It didn't take that long for me to work it out, once I was still breathing afterward." Sam shrugged and leaned back in his chair. "That, and you weren't exactly fighting me off."

"You threw yourself into my arms," Gene said, sounding smug. "I could've dodged, but I can't see as how I'd want to."

"I wouldn't have," Annie said. "Still, it was brave. Stupid, and brave."

Sam nodded. "I thought that at the time. Well, the stupid bit."

"And here we all are." Gene spread his hands, taking in the dusty dining room and their empty plates. "With no pudding to speak of."

Annie tucked her hands into her lap, feeling guilty though she was a guest. "Sorry."

"You're not meant to be my cook, Cartwright." Gene nudged Sam under the table. "What do you think I keep Sam for?"

"If you went shopping more than once a month, it'd be easier," Sam said, though he smiled.

"Could do, if I had a reason." Gene looked up at Annie, as if she was a better reason for him to take care of himself or his home than he was. "I'm not much of a one for entertaining."

She looked round at the dust accumulating in the corners, at the stained tablecloth, and smiled. "I hadn't noticed."

Sam shook his head. "You could get someone to do for you, you know."

"If I wanted a strange woman rummaging through my things, I'd find my own bird, thanks." Gene stood up. "I'd rather have my privacy than that."

Annie stood and helped gather the dishes. She had her own things to take care of, and she couldn't see her way clear to offering to help Gene with his house, neglected as it was, but she couldn't quite say that out loud, either. He hadn't exactly asked her to do anything, and there was enough she still didn't entirely understand in the proposal he'd facilitated that she couldn't decide what she owed him.

After the washing-up, they ended up in the living room, Gene in his chair and Annie pressed against Sam's side on the settee. She kept reminding herself of Sam's advice that if she was going to do something like this, she should do it sober, but the more she tried to imagine what was coming next, the more she wanted a drink to settle her nerves. "So," she said, when silence fell again.

"What's on your mind?" Sam said.

She couldn't look at him and say, in so many words, that they ought to find a nice bed and keep on with their so-called celebration. She looked at her knees instead."I don't know." All evening, she'd been expecting one or the other of them to push matters, to say something inescapably dirty and start things off, but they'd been sitting and talking over cases like all they meant to do with the night was visit. Annie was sure they'd meant to do more than that, and if they hadn't, she certainly had.

"Annie--" Sam kissed her cheek. "You know it's all right if you don't want to do anything."

She could've guessed that he'd say that, and it still made her angry to hear it. "Of course I do." Annie started unbuttoning her blouse, thinking of the Twillings' party and how very different this was. "I don't want to sit here quietly, doing nothing, and of course you wouldn't make me do anything at all I didn't want." She let her blouse hang half-open and waved her new ring at him. It finally fit right, so she didn't have to hold her hand just so to keep it on. "Do you think I'd be wearing this if I thought so?"

Sam said, "No," but he wasn't looking at her hand.

"Upstairs," Gene said. He stabbed out his cigarette and got up, then offered her his arm as gentleman-like as you please. "I told you about the bed before. Much more comfortable than that settee for hanky-panky, I can promise you that, darling."

Annie went with him, though the stairs were too narrow to go side by side. "I think we'd fall off the settee."

"At least once, yes," Sam said, following right behind her.

"After you," Gene said at the stairs, letting her go.

"Thank you," she said, and climbed with all the dignity she could muster.

"It's the second door on the right," Sam said, and then there was a thump behind her. "Keep walking. We're not doing this on the stairs."

Annie turned round, hoping they weren't going to smack each other around, not right then. "Is everything all right?"

Gene sighed, a lewd smile on his face. "More than. Keep going, petal, you're nearly there." It was much better to have him staring at her arse than planning some kind of violence. At least she was used to the former.

Sam sighed loudly. "It's nothing you haven't seen before."

"Shut it, Tyler, you're ruining my anticipation of the moment." Gene followed Annie, still a few steps down. "Right through here. And I changed the sheets, so there'll be no prissy whinging about the state of things."

The bedroom looked less neglected than the dining room, though that wasn't saying a great deal. The bed was wide and more neatly made than Annie would've guessed it might be, with a tan duvet and white sheets. "It's very nice," she said, hesitating by the laundry hamper.

"It'll be better in a moment," Gene said, and sat down on the edge of the bed. "Keep us company."

Annie raised her eyebrows at him, trying to work out what she could do to keep him company that she wasn't already doing. "What do you mean?" she asked, and not for the first time, she barely managed not to call him "sir." It was going to be a difficult habit to break entirely, but she'd known that since the Gazette situation. No matter how much time she spent in his company, he was still the Guv in the back of her head, first and foremost. The "sir" was just a compromise with that title, never mind that she was in his bedroom.

"What I'll never get at work from the prettiest plonk in the station." He patted his thigh. "Come on, petal."

Sam spluttered in the doorway. "Oh, that's not how you handle a workplace romance at all, especially not when there's already a power disparity. The point is to make sure that everyone's there of their own free will, and to cut as many of the associations with the workplace as you possibly can."

Gene shook his head. "That's your set of rules, Sammy-boy--and don't think I haven't heard you call me Guv when you're moaning into my pillow, neither, so don't come over all high and mighty with me."

"It's different when it's the subordinate doing it," Sam said, though he wasn't quite looking at either of them when he said it. "Besides, when you're reinforcing sexist stereotypes about female police officers while you're at it, that's a mess, Gene. You have to recognize that much."

Annie stared at Sam. She could recognize all the words he was using, and if she'd been pushed she could've defined them all without a problem, but what he was actually trying to express was beyond her for the moment. All that stuff about stereotypes might apply to someone, but this wasn't about anyone but them. "I don't mind. Seems to me you've asked me for much dirtier things than just sitting on your lap now and again, Sam."

He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. "That's not the point. You're--you're putting things together that have no business being together."

Gene met Annie's eyes and gave her a crooked smile. "Tell you what, love, I won't ask you to wear a plonk's uniform, and when you're in bed with me, you're still a detective. Same as with Dorothy, even when he gets his knickers in a twist."

She nodded. "I know it's nothing to do with work, or I wouldn't be here."

"Rule number one: if there's a thing anybody can worry about, Sam's worrying about it so we don't have to." Gene tapped his thigh again. "So, you can stay over there and worry with him, or you can come over here and I'll help you take that shirt off the rest of the way."

Annie kissed Sam's cheek. "It's all right, Sam. I don't think anyone supposes you got your position on your back, and everyone who counts knows perfectly well I didn't, so what's the harm?"

"You shouldn't feel obligated to do anything," Sam said firmly.

She smiled. "Good. I don't."

It had been long enough since she'd sat on anyone's lap--Father Christmas, her boyfriend Ned who'd had a thing about naughty girls and weird spanking sorts of games--that it felt odd to do it now. Between the awkwardness and Gene's comment earlier about how readily she could break Sam's bed, she said, "Let me know if I'm squashing you too much," before she even sat.

He put his hands on her hips, giving her a little squeeze, and helped her ease back. "I've had worse problems than you dropped in my lap on my easy days," he said in her ear.

Gene did not make a comfortable chair, not least because he had an erection that was prodding her in the arse. "Well, that's something, I suppose," Annie said, trying to find a comfortable place to settle.

"You're not falling off if I move my hand," he said, half a question.

She shifted slightly to double-check her balance and he took in a quick breath, then sighed. "I'm all right," she said. "Feels a mite silly, is all."

"Not from here." He lifted her hair up and kissed her neck, making her shiver, then started on the few buttons of her shirt that were still done up.

Sam folded his arms and leaned against the doorway. "You only look moderately ridiculous from this angle," he said. "It'd be better if you'd undressed first."

"That's a filthy sort of thought, Sam." Annie eased her arms out of her shirt and hung it off the end of the bed.

"He excels at those." Gene smacked the bed next to his right side. "Stop hovering and make yourself useful."

Sam shook his head, but he joined them a moment later, and when he kissed Annie he didn't feel anywhere near as annoyed as he looked. "Is this one of your neglected fetishes, then?" he asked.

Gene cupped Annie's breast and rubbed her nipple through her bra. "Yes. Hell, Cartwright, you think I get my hands on girls as much as I'd like?"

The friction made her squirm again. She hoped he didn't, for Sam's sake. "Not half enough."

"Well done, miss. Proving you're smarter than our Sam yet again: it'd be good for the division, keeping me happy, but that same respect for the law that keeps criminals quaking means I have to keep my hands off of--most of--the lovely things running around my station." Gene unfastened her bra with a confident touch. "I have to wait for the occasional brilliant one to throw herself into my lap."

Sam put his arm around Annie. "That really can't be all that comfortable."

If he'd said it twenty seconds beforehand, she might've agreed, but with both of them holding her, she was as secure as she needed to be. Still, he did need a lot of reassurance sometimes. "I'm all right, Sam."

Gene sniffed. "I'd say you should give it a try, but I suppose if you're going to sit on him, he'd rather have you over his face."

Sam laughed and shrugged at Annie, who was trying not to laugh too loudly at him or blush at the truth of it and how pleasant the memory was. "It has much more potential than this does, I'll give you that."

She patted his knee and wondered how long it would be before he insisted on doing exactly what Gene was teasing him about, or how long it would be before she could ask it of him again. "You get upset over the strangest things, and you take the strangest things in stride. Why aren't you as upset over that joke as you were over something harmless like sitting on someone's lap?"

"It's easier to take when it's the truth," Sam said, the corner of his mouth quirking up. "And I'd have to go a long way to convince you that it's not true."

Annie shook her head. "I need to shift a little," she said to Gene, and got up. "And, for God's sake, Sam, if you wanted me to believe it wasn't true, you'd have to find some way to go back in time and make it so you'd never shown me what you think of--" she didn't have a word for it that didn't sound awful, and the last thing she wanted to do was make Sam change his mind.

"Worse than that." Gene started unbuttoning his shirt. "While you're on that Doctor Who jaunt of yours, you'd have to work out how to stop yourself from being so damned convincing about liking birds."

Sam rolled his eyes and pushed Gene's hands out of the way, plucking his buttons open quickly. "There's no call to worry about that happening. And, what, you went straight from 'No, honestly, I like you, but I also enjoy women's company,' to thinking of me with my head between some girl's thighs?"

"Given the evidence," Gene said, and kissed him without explaining that at all.

Annie unfastened her skirt and watched them at it. Every time she saw them kiss, it seemed less strange and more like something that could fit in their lives. In her life, too, because she was still there, still watching, still turning the ring on her finger. If anyone could make sense of things, they could do it together, all three of them. She was as sure of that as she was of anything.

"Ah, now," Sam said, his cheeks flushed as he came up for air. "You had no direct evidence at all. All circumstantial at best."

"Circumstantial." Gene tugged at the cuff of Sam's shirt. "The likes of I have bloody well kissed you and I know how well you like to--" he looked at Annie and cleared his throat "--do things like that with me."

Annie covered her mouth to keep from laughing at him and sat on the far corner of the bed to take off her tights carefully. "I know the words," she said. "I don't use them around you because I know what the lads would think, but I know them."

"Don't encourage him," Sam said, and tossed his shirt off toward the corner near the door, then peeled his vest off. "I could get through any number of nights happily without being called a dirty cocksucker."

Based on the circumstantial evidence Annie had witnessed, she wasn't at all surprised that the term applied. It made her bite her lip to think about. She could hardly say she knew the words so confidently and then protest if they used them, but she wasn't sure what to make of the reality that went with them, still less of how fascinating the thought was.

"Lies, Tyler." Gene prodded him in the chest. "You would pine away if I didn't call you sweet names."

"I'd survive, and that doesn't come close to counting." Sam winked at Annie. "We could provide some more concrete evidence to support your earlier hypothesis, anyway."

"It's not a hypothesis to me." Annie kissed him and had a dizzy moment where she was sure there were at least four hands trying to get her knickers off and only one of them was hers. "Hang on," she said, and stepped out of them before she tripped. "There, now."

Gene held out his hand to her and she took it, kneeling up onto the bed. He was larger than Sam, and she hadn't needed to see him naked to know that, but it was more obvious close to. Gene was far more imposing than trim, though his confidence made up the lack. "Give me that bauble of yours, love, and we'll have it safe out of the way."

For all she'd only had the ring a few days, it still made her hand feel odd to take it off, though this was the last place she needed to remind anyone of its existence. It looked strange on the bedside table, whose doily had seen better decades and probably hadn't been washed since well before Missus Hunt went wherever it was she had gone.

There were more pressing issues to deal with, though, and far better things to look at. Annie kissed Gene when he'd put the ring aside and said, "Thank you."

"What for?"

She shrugged, trying to think of how to explain and not coming up with enough words for it. "All of this. Having me here." She glanced at Sam, who was watching with his head to one side. "Having us here, if you like, Sam."

"No, I don't think that's quite the word for it," Sam said, and put his arms around her again. "You're the one who's making this different, this time, and I'm so glad you're taking it well."

Gene snorted. "If she was breathing into a paper sack and drinking all my brandy, I'd still say she was taking it better than you could've ruddy well expected of a nice girl. This is above and beyond the call of duty."

Annie smiled and moved out of Sam's arms. "I'm not here for any duty. Though I think DI Tyler had some evidence to provide that he kept on mentioning."

"I could do that," he said, sounding so eager she grinned. Of all the things she'd learned to expect of him, this was one of the best so far.

"You do specialize in being bloody predictable." Gene nudged Sam's shoulder. "Lie back, then."

Sam lay down and settled the pillow under his neck, not flush up against the headboard like he would be to sleep, but a little ways down the bed. The invitation was entirely obvious: he was making space for her, and she was welcome to take advantage of him. "Whenever you're ready, Annie."

Annie edged out of the way to make room. Gene's bed was much wider than hers, but it wasn't built for three, and it wasn't as easy as she'd like to maneuver gracefully without fear of kneeing someone in the side.

However much she was looking forward to it, it was one thing to give in to Sam's apparently earnest request when there was no one watching her, when no one would know how lovely it was except him. It was strange knowing that Gene was watching. It wasn't dark enough inside or outside to provide her with the least bit of cover, and while she was sure he didn't mind any of it--he wouldn't have urged Sam on like that if he did--it was still like being naked twice over. "Just catching my breath," she said.

"Shouldn't worry about that, darling. Half the point's in not being able to."

Sam frowned and sat up enough to pat her thigh. "What would you rather do?" he asked.

That was an impossible question, though she could think of four or five quick answers. None of them seemed as easy as this would be. She could blame it all on Sam, after all, no matter what noises she found herself making. "This is fine," she said, and nerved herself up to straddle his face.

He didn't remark on how excited she already was, which was a small kindness. She'd been half out of her head all through dinner, and only grew more so as the night went on. All those kisses, all those touches, the gentle ones and the teasing, had left her so slick she hadn't wanted their hands down her knickers, except for how desperately she'd wanted exactly that.

They weren't kind with each other about how much either of them wanted, and that made it worse. Annie didn't want to admit out loud that she'd been thinking of Sam's mouth in every spare moment she'd had since he did this for her the first time; she was sure Sam would take it well, but Gene's idea of a sweet name was nothing she wanted to earn.

None of the dreams lived up to the reality, especially not when Gene put his arm round her waist, easily as he had when she was sitting on his lap, and kissed her mouth as carefully as Sam was licking her. "Are you sure you haven't been at my scotch?" he asked.

"Of course not." She braced herself on Sam's shoulder as he found a particularly sensitive spot and teased her there, again, again. "Oh--I--Sam said best not, and I--I listened."

"You've gone bright red," Gene said. "Hardly any reason for that, yet."

Sam made an irritated noise and left off licking her. Annie bit her lip hard to keep herself from protesting while he said, "Thank you very much."

"Hush up and prove me wrong, then." Gene tousled his short hair.

Annie gasped when Sam started again, spreading her open, and moved one hand to Gene's shoulder. "You're dead wrong," she said, when she could breathe again. "He's too damn good at--oh, Sam, God--"

Gene sighed, though he didn't sound at all unhappy. "I'll have to take your word on it, love. Mind if I join in?"

She forced her eyes open long enough to find his wrist and pull his hand to her breast. He was careful, and then less so, but when she whimpered and shook her head, he left off. "Sorry," she said. "Just--I--"

"Too much?"

She nodded, trusting that he wasn't squeezing his eyes shut half so much as she was right then. "I just--oh--" and her words went somewhere else entirely at the touch of his tongue on her nipple, starting as a tease and turning into a suck that made her shiver. Between the two of them, they were taking her apart in no time flat, and she tried to hold on to something, to think outside of the movements of tongues and lips that made her press her lips together to keep in the moans. "God, I--I can't--"

Gene's hand was on her waist, warm and steadying. "Can't what?"

"Don't stop, don't ever stop--"

He chuckled, half in his throat as he took her other nipple in his mouth and teased her until she couldn't keep herself from moaning. "That's--please, yes--" Annie tried to make herself stay quiet, though there weren't so many neighbors to worry about, but it was a losing battle with Sam's tongue quick against her and the wet warmth on her breast. Somehow they found a rhythm, or perhaps that was her heart, beating twice as fast as it normally might and drowning out the sounds she made as she came.

"That was too easy by half," Gene said, and when she could think well enough to find herself, he was holding her up with his arm round her shoulders. "Ready to go again?"

Annie knelt up to give Sam a chance to catch his breath. "Not just now. That was--" she smiled at Sam, then at Gene, wondering how drunk she looked. "That was really lovely. Like it usually is, only, well. Better."

Sam squeezed her thigh. "Better on my account?"

She tried to piece it out but she couldn't separate what he'd been doing from the whole thing, hands and lips and arms. "I have no idea." Once she'd started having a real conversation with him, it felt too strange to be sitting on him like she was, so she moved off him and over to one edge of the bed. There were only two pillows, but that was all it took to span the width in any case. "I don't know," she said again, and found that she was shivering.

"It doesn't much matter," Sam said, and hugged her.

"I know you're not hiding over there," Gene said, and gave her arm a squeeze.

Annie smiled, though she was afraid it came off as quavery. "Of course not. Just catching my breath." She reached round Sam and Gene took her hand, then kissed the back like some knight in a film.

"Nothing broken, then?"

Gene was asking, but Sam frowned at the question, as though he wouldn't have noticed something going that far wrong.

Annie kissed his nose, which was slightly less sticky than his mouth. "I'm fine," she said. "Plenty fine that you can get up to whatever you like."

"Whatever I like?" Sam asked. He stroked her cheek with his fingers, which were in no better state than his lips. "That's a hard question. I could say I was just doing as I liked, if that's a good answer."

"Good God, Tyler." Gene tugged on his shoulder until he turned onto his back again, then leaned over him and kissed him like he was Sleeping Beauty coming back from the dead and needed all the passion he could get to wake him. "You and your little ways. It's a wonder any girl will talk to you twice. You'd lick the pink right off her if she let you."

Sam grinned. "There are worse ways to go."

Annie propped her head up on one arm to watch them better, wondering what they would do next, and whether it would seem as surreally normal as everything had thus far. "It's rather tiring for the girl, is all."

"Or the bloke, when the wind's in the opposite quarter." Gene ran his thumb over Sam's swollen lips and pulled it away before Sam could do more than kiss it. "Not tonight, Sammy-boy."

"Whenever you like, then," Sam said.

Annie snickered at the first thing she thought of, then shook her head when they both looked at her. "You wouldn't really--at work--I mean, it would be foolish."

"And the good Lord knows neither of us are ever foolish," Gene said. "No, petal. Never at work."

"--anymore," Sam added.

"Not with your reputation on the line, Annie love." Gene nudged Sam again.

Annie thought of the ring she'd taken off and the truths it hid: the way Sam's eyes lit when he smiled at Gene in nearly the same way they did when he looked at her, the way it felt to kiss Gene and know that it was all right, that he wanted her, that Sam was watching and the last thing he was going to do was protest. Still, it was easier, and she wouldn't have to hide her smiles at Sam every time she thought of this.

She'd have to keep her expressions to herself when she looked at Gene, but Sam had dealt with that for a period of time she still couldn't name, and if she hadn't guessed, she doubted anyone else had.

She shrugged. "I'm not fussed about anything like that."

"You shouldn't have to be," Gene said, using a tone of voice that made him sound more like the Guv than anything. "We're not going to go getting ourselves in all kinds of trouble. Right, Dorothy?"

Sam poked him in the chest. "Since when am I the one who starts trouble around here?"

"Since you showed up in my station." Gene sighed and kissed him. "Right. Enough of that, or we'll be swearing all manner of nonsense we can't keep up." He smiled crookedly at Annie. "So, love, what's your pleasure?"

Annie tried to decide whether she wanted to urge them on. "Seems to me we already did that."

"No one's keeping score," Sam said.

Gene shrugged. "That, and you two did crack that case right quick. And--" he beckoned to Annie and she sat up, leaning over Sam's chest when Gene pulled her close to whisper in her ear. "Been a while since I had a bird round the place."

Annie smiled at how oblique the suggestion was; that wasn't Gene's style in the least, not when he wanted something. "You're not going to make me slap you and run off into the night," she said, loudly enough for Sam to hear.

"I should hope not." Sam sat up and put his arm round her as if he needed to protect her from Gene. "What kind of gymnastics are you trying to get us into now?"

"Nothing half as exciting as what you come up with," Gene said. "Just a spot of good old-fashioned fun."

"Not too old-fashioned," Sam said, and edged down the bed, slipping out from under them.

Annie blinked after him. She'd half expected him to complain that no one had done anything for him yet, though that wasn't Sam's way, really. "Where are you off to?"

"Not far." He retrieved his trousers and a handful of condoms as thick as the stack he'd stuffed in her drawer. "Just making sure we're prepared."

Gene sniffed. "You and your rubber johnnies. Not that you've not got a point this time, but there are limits, there really are."

"I haven't found them yet." Sam handed him one and put the rest on the bedside table, not in it, which was untidy and made the place look more like a brothel than it had before, and that was counting the part with three people in a bed.

Annie shook her head. "The chemist must think you have all sorts of girls on your string."

"As long as they don't think I have a kid in every lane, I don't mind so much."

"They'd be going some to accuse you of that," Gene said, and gave Annie a look it took her a moment to work out. He was smiling a little, and maybe that was at Sam or maybe it was at her. Whatever had made him smile, he looked hesitant.

More than hesitant, he looked nearly shy.

"Are you all right?" Annie asked, trying to convince herself that she was making things up. There was no reason for him to hesitate, she knew that, and he wasn't the sort of man who would normally pause for anything. Particularly not, she would have said, if the other option involved a naked girl.

"You sure you want to do this, Annie?" he asked, and she looked at him, then at Sam, in case she'd misheard or misunderstood. Sam looked nearly as confused as she felt, which confirmed her feelings but didn't make them any better.

"Why wouldn't I be? You've got a prophylactic, so what's the fuss?" She'd mastered the word at university to talk her way out of drunken trysts by insisting that the bloke had to provide one. Most of them hadn't known the term.

She might've found something more direct to encourage him, but when she'd come halfway to being as obvious as she wanted to be before, Gene had acted as though she'd done far worse things than take off her blouse on his settee. If she went so far as to curse, she didn't know whether he'd cheer her on or decide she wasn't worth his time.

"That's only part of it," Gene said.

Annie kissed him before he could get any more bashful. It didn't suit him in the least. "I've done this before, you know. More than once, even."

Gene patted Sam on the thigh. "Well done, there."

Annie spluttered and frowned at him, trying to work out what was hard to understand. "With Sam, too, but I've not been sitting around waiting for the last ten years with my knees shut tight, looking for the perfect man."

"Thank God for that," Sam said softly.

Gene shook his head. "As you say, love. Still, you're a good girl."

"Oh, for heaven's sake." Annie laughed and kissed him, making it as dirty as she could, trying to make him see that being a good girl didn't mean he had to treat her like a china doll. She didn't know many many tricks she hadn't pulled out yet, but neither had she put her hand around his prick before this.

He groaned against her mouth, but it seemed to ease his mind; it was a rare virgin who'd go for a man's erection, or some such thing.

It was a rarer one still who'd take a French letter out of his hand and put it on him while he kissed her blind, with her boyfriend--or her fiancee, to be specific--murmuring encouragement. At least when Sam asked, "Ready, Annie?" he sounded more like he was looking for an excuse to stick his tongue in her again.

"I have been, yes."

Gene gave her a look like he wanted to wait till they were properly wed, for all she had her legs round his waist. "If you're sure," he said.

Sam smacked his arm. "Oh, get on with it. You weren't half this gentle with me."

Gene thumped him on the shoulder. "If you don't trust me to look after your young lady, you shouldn't bring her round."

"You keep sitting there," Sam said, reaching between them to tease her. "Woman can live by kisses alone, but she shouldn't have to if she'd rather not."

Annie rocked up against his hand and leaned back on her elbows. "I like that philosophy."

Sam grinned at her. "I know," he said, and kissed her.

"Philosophy's got no place in the bedroom," Gene objected, and slid his fingers in between Sam's for a moment, holding her open until he'd lined himself up, thick and nudging just where she needed him. "Never done this with a bird while she tangled tongues with someone else," he said, half to himself.

Sam choked with laughter and let Annie go just as Gene gave a push and she groaned with the fullness of it. "We could stop."

"It's not the best angle for watching, is all." Gene rolled his hips slowly, finding his pace. "All hair and ears."

"Don't stop," Annie said, though when she reached for Sam to demand another kiss, he took her hand and nuzzled her fingers. The wet heat felt like another shiver down her spine, one more thing making her want.

Sam let Annie's fingers go with a lingering lick and put his arm round Gene's shoulders. "You can't tell me you're feeling neglected."

"God, no." Gene kissed him briefly, then patted him and ducked out of his embrace. "Don't distract me. It's been too long." He licked his thumb and brushed Annie's nipple, stroking until she sighed.

Annie hitched her leg round his waist again and pulled him down to her, over her, till he braced himself on the pillow and breathed heavily against her mouth. Gene closed his eyes tightly. "You'll have me disgracing myself, darling."

"I'm not keeping time," she promised him, and kissed him, sucking his tongue into her mouth until he pulled back and bit at her lip.

"I left my clipboard at the office," Sam said. "And the camera, more's the pity."

Gene laughed once and his breath caught in his throat, rough. "How do you stand him, Annie? All those perverted thoughts."

"We get by." She reached toward Sam and he took her hand, sucking at her fingers again and nibbling the soft skin between her thumb and forefinger as if it was an entirely different bit of her body. It threw all of her words sideways and she dug her free hand into Gene's shoulder, holding on tightly. Having Gene over her, in her, was almost entirely different from what Sam usually asked of her: more demanding, more like being trapped and held and taken, perfectly safe instead of perfectly in control.

Sam kissed her again, just her cheek. "Do you have any concept of how beautiful you are?"

She laughed once, sure she was bright red with effort and covered in sweat, not all of it hers. "Not very?"

"Sexy, then. Hot as hell, both of you. God, I could watch you for hours."

"Not bloody likely." Gene made a low, desperate noise and wrapped his hand around her hip, shifting his angle slightly. "Never--nn--never tell me where you learned this, Annie."

"Never," she promised, arching up to meet him.

Sam sighed, his breath shuddering nearly as much as Annie's was, and pressed his hand between them again, easing it low on her belly and lower to add to the friction and the insistent beat of her pulse. "Is this good?"

Annie bit her lip against a curse. "Yes--yes. Like that." She ground against Sam's hand and felt herself tense.

Gene's rhythm went ragged and he held onto her like a vise, the tight grip driving her higher. "Oh, God, love, that's--" he kissed her hard and shook, going nearly still for a few long breaths.

Annie moaned against his mouth and tightened her fingers in his hair to hold him there longer. Gene broke off the kiss as she was getting what she needed from it, and he said, "Oh, Annie," like another kiss. She opened her eyes and he was smiling, just a little, around his eyes, looking more pleased than she'd seen him in months. Knowing he was watching made her shiver harder and feel even more naked than she was, but also more beautiful. Between the weight of his body, the feeling of him stilling inside her, and Sam's fingers on her, she came again, feeling greedy and overwhelmed all at once.

Sam said, "Absolutely gorgeous," somewhere, while she was half out of her head and didn't have the breath to protest.

"You lucky bastard," Gene said, and Sam kissed him.

Sam stroked her hair lightly while she gathered her thoughts and tried to remember how she'd got such a cramp in her leg. "I think I need to move," she said, when she could make the sentence work properly.

"Sorry, darling." Gene brushed her cheek with his lips and sat back--out--up in an ungraceful but useful way that left her gasping for breath for a moment or two.

"Thank you," she said. "It's all right, really." Annie made her breath more even so as not to worry him. It wasn't that she'd been smothered, exactly, so much as that she'd forgot to breathe normally that whole time.

Sam said, "Only all right?" and kissed her again before she could answer his question.

"Much better than all right." Annie considered how much of a mess she was and how likely Sam was to mind at this point, and hugged him. She said, "Thank you," in his ear, not sure what that applied to exactly, but sure that she needed to say it for at least one reason. She was still blissful, too warm, trying to believe that there was a place for everything she'd just done in her everyday life.

The bed shifted while Sam frowned curiously at her and Gene said, "Back in a moment."

"I haven't done that much for you yet," Sam said, though there was a smirk in the corners of his mouth that said he knew he'd done a great deal and wanted an excuse to do more. "What's this you're thanking me for?"

Annie shrugged and kissed his smirk away, at least for the time she spent kissing him. "Any number of things. Being here, being all right with having me here, the--" she couldn't bring herself to say "the ring," not when it hadn't been his present at all, for all he could've decided that the whole thing was a terrible idea.

Without that promise, she wasn't at all sure she would've been able to bring herself to do all the things they'd done, especially not with Gene as well as Sam. For all she trusted them both, there was trust and trust, and the kind that came with a promise that the world could see was safer than the kind that didn't. She knew as well as they did that there was no way to make a promise that went for all three of them in everyone else's eyes, but they had made it, half unspoken but no less real, implicit in a tiny piece of jewelry.

"That was--I can't say 'my pleasure,' yet, but God, Annie, I want you in all the good parts of my life." Sam took her hand and laced their fingers together. "And this is one of them. One of the very best."

She rested her head on his shoulder and listened to his heartbeat, steady and calm. "I know. That's why I thanked you. It could've been different. It could still be different, if you decided to chuck me out and go back to what you had before."

"What's all this?" Gene asked, his hands on his hips when Annie turned to look at him.

It seemed as though she should be used to seeing him naked after what they'd done, but that tended to come with time more than with experience. "We're just talking," Sam said.

"Just talking?" Gene frowned at Annie. "What's he been saying that you think he's going to toss you out on your ear? He could, I suppose, but if Sam's that much of a fool, I promise you I'm not."

Annie sat up and glared at him. "I didn't say he was going to, and neither did he. I said that'd be different to how this is. Unless I'm wrong, and you're thinking of asking me to go and not come back." She was sure as she said it that he wasn't going to say anything of the sort, but she needed to hear it again.

"Never," Sam said.

Gene snorted. "Not bloody likely, sweetheart. You give Sam his walking papers and I'll be knocking at your door to take you out to the flicks."

The thought of Gene coming courting at his age, and at hers, made her laugh and cover her mouth until she could keep it quieter. That would be a piece of gossip that the women's department would chew on for years. "Oh, my."

Sam got up and gave Gene an accusatory look, perhaps two feet away from him. "You never took me out."

"Didn't need to, did I?" Gene spread his hands. "I get all I want from you with no mucking around, bringing tissues to movies with swelling violins, arguing about what show to watch, or any of that rot."

"No Roger Whittaker," Sam said.

Annie blinked at Sam and thought of his dancing, the times he'd played songs for her. None of them had been anything like that calm or smooth. "He doesn't seem your type of music."

Sam had just time enough to say, "He's not," before Gene tackled him onto the bed, barely missing Annie.

"Ignore everything he says, petal," Gene said, holding Sam down with his full weight and one hand firmly over his mouth. "He gets stroppy late at night. Bastard of a habit in the middle of one of his prissy surveillance things, but at least we can take care of it here."

Sam thumped him in the side and turned his face away far enough that he could talk for a moment. It helped that Gene wasn't trying to stop him particularly, and that they weren't fighting in any way that counted. "I am not stroppy. I'm trying to explain some of the facts of life to Annie."

"The facts of life?" She laughed and looked at them again, thinking about how much they weren't fighting in earnest. It was one thing to know what they got up to intellectually, another to see them kissing each other until she believed they meant it, and yet another to have two naked men wrestling, however teasingly, so close to her that she could reach out and touch either of them. Some of the facts of life were things she'd like to see firsthand before she promised that she wanted to see them twice.

Gene glared unconvincingly at him. "I don't think she needs lessons in that kind of thing from you. Or if she did, she's been learning fast." He tousled Sam's hair and gave Annie a sad look, as if she'd insulted his honor. "He also makes things up, our Sam."

"No, I bloody don't." Sam smacked him again harder and Annie winced.

"Are you trying to have a fight or go back to bed?" she asked, because it didn't seem like a fight, or anything worth having a fight about, but they'd had rows over things that seemed less important, and sometimes they came to blows over something that would be better talked about. Then again, she was starting to believe there wasn't a great deal of distance between fighting and ending up in bed where they were concerned.

Gene frowned at Sam as if he was a suspect under interrogation and Gene was waiting for him to crack. "What are we trying for here, Gladys?"

"Don't ask stupid questions." Sam wriggled free enough to kiss him. "You may have had a grand old time earlier, and I won't even begin to deny I was enjoying watching, but it wasn't quite the same as being involved."

Annie bit her lip. She hadn't wanted him to feel excluded, and he hadn't said anything about it at the time. That had been just as well because everything she could think of to include three people seemed as though it would be ambitious, especially the first time, when she wasn't used to them together yet. "I'm sorry," she said.

They both gave her an incredulous look. "What for?" Sam asked.

She waved her hand, trying to pick between euphemisms. "You know. What we did, without you."

"Not so much without as next to," Gene said, and let Sam up.

Sam sighed and sat up. "I don't mean I minded, not at all. Not then, not now. But unless you're both exhausted, I rather think it's my turn."

"All right," Annie said, though when she shifted on the bed, she was afraid it might be too much if she had to do anything other than sit carefully at a desk the next day. "If you want, Sam. I mean--"

Sam's eyes went wide for a moment. "Oh--God, don't say you'll do anything you won't enjoy. That's no way to treat this, or me."

She stood up, testing how sore she was, and couldn't bring herself to put a brave face on it. She was going to be all right, she was sure of that, but much more and she'd have all her attention between her legs for a few days, wishing she hadn't been so wanton. "What do you want?" she asked, putting the responsibility back on him.

He looked away from her a moment, not toward Gene, but out into the room, possibly at the lone chest of drawers. "That depends on what you'd like, honestly."

Gene sat heavily next to him. "We're back to this game, are we?"

Sam shrugged. "I'm not going to push either of you into anything."

"I know you're not," Annie said, putting her hand on his knee. She sighed and let her prurient imagination run wild with her next question, promising herself that if she'd thought of it before she saw it, it would be less upsetting once it happened in front of her. "What would you do if I wasn't here?"

Gene coughed and looked away from her. "That's a hell of a question, sweetheart."

"It's a perfectly fair question," Sam said, sounding as though people asked him what he did in bed with men every day. "Especially considering that you have a fair idea what we'd do if we were somewhere else, Gene."

"That's not because you've told me, that's because I know your dirty habits and I can make a guess as to what Annie'd let you get away with." Gene gave her a sidelong look. "Though I'm revising a few of those theories."

"Oh?" Annie didn't know whether that was a compliment or an insult; she'd hardly done anything yet that anyone could think of as especially odd, apart from having the three of them there.

"Nothing much." He looked away again.

She cleared her throat and told herself firmly that he knew what sorts of things she could do, now, or at least some of them. "You must have a few ideas."

Gene shrugged. "I figured it wasn't all that grand, or what would Sammy here still want with me? I know better now."

Sam groaned and put his head in his hands. "I told you, it's not about sex."

"Then why are you sitting on my bed in the raw, Tyler?" Gene punched him lightly in the arm. "Don't fool yourself."

Sam gave Annie a pleading look. "You understand, don't you?"

Annie thought of her formal training in therapy and the thousands of ways it was inappropriate for a psychologist, especially a partially trained one, to interfere in communication between two people that didn't directly concern her. "I think so," she said, and left it there. They'd work it out.

"Then--" Sam prodded Gene's thigh. "Look, if it was about sex and nothing else, what would I want with involving Annie?"

Gene leered at him, then at her. "That much I understand."

"No, but--" Sam sighed. "I don't want to argue about this right now. I'd much rather it was just about sex, for the next ten or twenty minutes, and we can leave the rest for some other conversation."

"Or never."

"Another time," Annie promised Sam, and promised herself. "You still haven't said what you'd do if I wasn't here."

Gene shook his head. "Not fit conversation for a lady, that kind of stuff."

Sam gave her a rueful smile. "It depends. Most of the time, if I'm this desperate and he's this grouchy, handjobs are the safest answer."

Annie nodded and willed herself not to blush. "I could do that as well as anyone."

Gene groaned and put his arm round Sam. "Not from practice, promise me that. It's all down to your natural talent, Cartwright."

She thought of the various men she'd practiced with and how well any of them stacked up against the two she was in bed with, only to pause a moment and wonder at herself. There had been a few, and some of them had mattered at the time, but she wouldn't have thrown herself after any of them if they'd told her they loved someone else. Or wanted someone else, and then acted for all the world as if they'd been married to him for years, no matter how impossible that marriage was.

Most of the men she'd known weren't worth breaking rules for, not the rules that mattered.

She kissed Sam's cheek to feel the brush of his stubble against her lips and reached for his prick. It twitched in her hand, firming up nicely. He was already sticky, though she reckoned teasing him about liking to watch was too obvious to be worth the joke. "I don't know as how I have a lot of talent. You'll have to tell me, Sam."

He hummed and lifted his hips into her touch. "You've been doing fine so far. And--nn--it's not going to take much tonight."

"You might've looked after yourself. We already know you're a tosser," Gene said and thumped his shoulder, then put his hand over Annie's, flicking at the head of Sam's prick with his thumb.

Sam squeezed his eyes shut and made a strangled noise. "And--and miss this?"

Annie nuzzled his ear and let Gene guide her hand, speeding up slightly. "It wouldn't have been fair," she said in his ear. "After everything you've done for me, to stop me having a chance to pay you back--I'm glad you waited."

"God." Sam let his head fall back and she kissed his neck, then thought of how often Gene cuffed him and how little he seemed to mind it, and bit his shoulder, lightly enough that it shouldn't mark. He shuddered. "Please--Annie--"

"Please yes or please no?" she asked, as much to hear him say it as because she wasn't sure.

"Harder," he said.

Gene chuckled and tightened his grip until it nearly hurt her fingers. It had to be more so for Sam, who whimpered and thrust into their hands more forcefully. "Better?" Gene asked.

"Yes, but--" Sam opened his eyes and smiled hazily at Annie. "Really--please. Harder."

She bit him again, enough that she was sure it would leave teethmarks low on his shoulder, and he shook, wailed, arched off the bed. "More," Sam said, and she braced herself for a taunt about vampires, about perverted little buggers who needed to be treated like the nasty sods they were, but Gene wasn't saying anything.

She bit a line up Sam's shoulder nearly to his neck, to where his collar would leave his skin bare, and realized before she did it that anyone who saw him with a bite on his neck would know he was hers, sure as the ring on her finger said the opposite. "Gene, help me a moment," she said, and when he looked down at their joined hands, she shook her head. "Up here, too." No one would be likely to notice the difference unless they were as close to Sam as she was, right then.

Sam's breathing went ragged before Gene leaned in. "Christ, yes," he said, and held tight to Annie's shoulder for balance. "Please--"

Annie kissed his neck before she did it, teasing at the last, and felt him gasp as much as she heard it. When she scraped her teeth over his skin, Sam moaned; when she bit him, he started to come, pulsing hot over her fingers and shuddering until the bed creaked.

"God, Sam," Gene said when he'd stopped. "Get a bird round the place and you come over all perverted, is that it?"

Sam smiled at him sleepily. There were bright red marks on the base of his neck, lurid and obvious, not likely to fade much by morning. "That's not it."

"You've never been very quiet about being odd, Sam, but they will hoot at you tomorrow. At us, more like." No one was going to have the least doubt of what they'd been doing; it was as clear as if she'd found him a ring somewhere and given it to him. Or if she'd found one with Gene, who'd know the truth. Annie let them both go, then looked at the bed and tried to work out how much cleaning it and everyone in it would need before they were fit to sleep. "They'll laugh even more if you look like I kept you up all night."

"Will you?" he asked, still a touch breathless.

She kissed one of the bite marks on his shoulder and shifted on the bed. It was a pleasant fantasy, but she was too sore to make it reality yet. "Some other time. We'll have to work up to it."

"Some time you can look after one another." Gene stood up.

That was hardly the sort of thing she liked to hear from a man she'd just had sex with. Annie stood and hugged him, reckoning that getting them both slightly more messy wouldn't do any harm at that point. It was a moment before he hugged her back, and a moment longer before he relaxed. "Think of it more like a stakeout," she said. "Best if we can spell each other if we're going to make it all night."

"God save me from filthy-minded plonks." Gene kissed her, slow and teasing.

Sam put his arms round both of them. Annie resolved not to leave till she'd had a bath, not with him slick against her hip. "I'll save you," Sam said. "But not from each other." He kissed Gene to seal the promise.

Annie leaned against them and grinned. "You'd have a hard time managing it. We'll be glued together in a minute."

"I can't think of anywhere I'd rather be," Sam said, and Annie had to agree.


End file.
